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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



A STUDY OF 

PROSE FICTION 

BY 

BLISS PEEKY 







BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

<®bt fitoer#&e $re#£, Camfori&oe 

1902 






9j 




THE LIBRAftYO 
CONGRESS, 

DLASS^KXo No, 

copy b. 



COPYRIGHT, I902, BY BLISS PERRY 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



• .• • •• 1 



• • » • 1 



• -•. • 



»■** 



I 



To 

THE PRINCETON MEN WHO USED TO LISTEN 
AMIABLY TO THESE DISCOURSES 



CONTENTS 



CHAP. PAGE 

I. The Study of Fiction .... 1 

II. Prose Fiction and Poetry ... 28 

III. Fiction and the Drama .... 48 

IV. Fiction and Science .... 73 
V. The Characters 94 

VI. The Plot 129 

VII. The Setting . . . . . . 154 

VIII. The Fiction- Writer .... 177 

IX. Realism 217 

X. Romanticism 258 

XI. The Question of Form .... 284 

XII. The Short Story 300 

XIII. Present Tendencies of American Fiction 335 
Appendix : Suggestions for Study. — Bibliography. 
— Topics for Study. — Original Work in Con- 
struction. — Practice in Analysis. — Review 
Questions ....... 361 

Index 399 



A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 



CHAPTER I 

THE STUDY OF FICTION 

" There are few ways in which people can he better employed 
than in reading a good novel. (I do not say that they should 
do nothing else.) " Benjamin Jowett, Life and Letters. 

In beginning: any study, it is 

__ b & ,. . J Nature of the 

well to take a preliminary survey problems in- 
of the field, and to note the gen- 
eral character of the questions that are likely 
to arise as one advances. When the chosen 
field of study is one of the arts, it is obvious 
that the student's curiosity may be aroused 
by various aspects of the art under consider- 
ation. He may find himself interested pri- 
marily in the artist, or chiefly attracted by the 
work of art itself, or concerned with the at- 
titude of the public which takes pleasure in 
that particular form of art. In the study of 
prose fiction, for instance, one person may 



2 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

discover that his chief curiosity is about cer- 
tain novelists who have been eminent practi- 
tioners in their profession. Another person 
may care»little for the personal traits of writ- 
ers of fiction, but be greatly interested in 
novels ; and a third may find much to reward 
his endeavor in noting the various character- 
istics of the fiction-reading public. The gen- 
eral nature of the problems arising in the 
study of fiction is thus indicated, sufficiently 
for our present purpose, in saying that they 
deal with literary artists, with specific works 
of art, and with the public, great or small, 
to which the art of fiction makes a particular 
appeal. 

It confers a certain dig;nitv upon 

The universal 

appetite for the study of fiction to remember 
how universal is the human appe- 
tite for fiction of some sort. In one of the 
most delightf ul of Thackeray's " Koundabout 
Papers," " On a Lazy Idle Boy " who leaned 
on the parapet of the old bridge at Chur, 
quite lost in a novel, Thackeray comments 
upon " the appetite for novels extending to 
the end of the world ; far away in the frozen 
deep, the sailors reading them to one another 
during the endless night ; far away under 



PREFACE 

The aim of this little book is to discuss 
the outlines of the art of fiction. In writing 
it I have followed more or less closely the 
notes prepared, a few years ago, for a course 
of lectures on Prose Fiction at Princeton 
University. These lectures were repeated 
with several classes, and many teachers who 
have had occasion to examine the syllabus 
of the lectures, and the topical work as- 
signed in connection with them, have asked 
me to print a book that would be adapted 
to effective use in the classroom. I have 
confidence in the general method of fiction 
study which is here outlined, although the 
kindly cooperation of my former pupils may 
have then given the study a certain ardor 
which the book will fail to impart. 

It happened that the author wrote fiction, 
after a fashion, before attempting to lecture 



vi PREFACE 

upon it, and he is now conscious that the 
academic point of view has in turn been 
modified by the impressions gained during 
his editorship of " The Atlantic Monthly." 
Whether the professional examination of 
many thousands of manuscript stories is cal- 
culated to exalt one's standards of the art of 
fiction may possibly be questioned. But this 
editorial experience, supplementing the other 
methods of approach to the subject, may be 
thought to contribute something of practical 
value to the present study of the novelist's 
work. It is as if an enthusiast for art, after 
serving first as painter's apprentice and then 
as lecturer on painting, had been forced to 
act as hanging committee for an exhibition, 
and now, with a zeal for his subject which 
survives every disillusionment, were to mount 
a chair in the picture gallery and preach to 
all comers ! For it is not to be denied that 
there is more or less sermonizing in this 
book. The homiletic habit lurks deep in 
the New Englander as in the Scotchman, and 
many a Yankee who can claim few other 



PREFACE vii 

points of resemblance to Eobert Louis Ste- 
venson is like him at least in this, that he 
" would rise from the dead to preach." 

It should be stated distinctly that the pre- 
sent volume makes no attempt to trace the 
history of the English novel. That task has 
been adequately performed by several excel- 
lent handbooks, which are easily accessible. 
Most of my illustrations of the various aspects 
of the art in question are drawn, however, 
from English and American stories. While 
I have not overlooked, I trust, the work of 
the more significant contemporary writers, I 
have made no attempt to decorate these 
pages with references to the " novel of the 
year." On the contrary, wherever an allu- 
sion to the writings of masters like Scott and 
Thackeray and Hawthorne would serve the 
purpose, I have given myself the pleasure of 
such illustration, knowing that their books 
will continue to be read long after the novels 
of the year have faded out of memory. 

It is to be hoped that this discussion of 
the pleasant art of story-writing will not 



viii PREFACE 

weigh too heavily upon the reader's con- 
science. If he likes, he may avoid the Ap- 
pendix. But the " painful " reader, who is 
after all the pride of the classroom and the lit- 
erary club, and who deserves one of the best 
seats by the family library-table, will, I hope, 
find in the Appendix much that will prove 
interesting and useful. The review questions 
upon Scott's " Ivanhoe " are reprinted there 
with the courteous permission of Messrs. Long- 
mans, Green & Company, the publishers of 
my annotated edition of that novel. A por- 
tion of the opening chapter on The Study of 
Fiction has already appeared in print in the 
eleventh volume of the Proceedings of the 
Modern Language Association of America. 
The chapter on The Short Story was printed 
in " The Atlantic " for August, 1902. 

BLISS PERRY. 
Cambridge, 1902, 



THE STUDY OF FICTION 3 

the Syrian stars, the solemn sheikhs and eld- 
ers hearkening to the poet as he recites his 
tales ; far away in the Indian camps, where 

the soldiers listen to 's tales or 's, 

after the hot day's march ; far away in little 
Chnr yonder, where the lazy boy pores over 
the fond volume, and drinks it in with all his 
eyes ; — the demand being what we know it 
is, the merchant must supply it, as he will 
supply saddles and pale ale for Bombay or 
Calcutta." The universality of the liking 
for fiction is equaled only by the variety of 
tastes that are gratified by fiction reading. 
Some of the most intellectual men have con- 
fessed their preference for the most unintel- 
lectual stories, and very ignorant and stupid 
people are constantly — and in a most praise- 
worthy fashion ! — endeavoring to assimilate 
the lofty thought and profound emotion with 
which the great masterpieces of fiction are 
charged. Tastes are altered as we pass from 
youth to middle age and old age ; they 
change with every vital experience ; they 
grow delicate or coarse in accordance with 
the meat upon which they are fed. But the 
desire for " the story " outlasts childhood and 
savagery. It is a part of the spiritual hun- 



4 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

ger of the most highly developed individuals 
and races ; and it is impossible to foresee the 
time when fiction shall cease to be an impor- 
tant part of the world's literary production. 
" The demand being what we know it is, the 
merchant must supply it." 

Variety of Not 0n ty * S ^is desire ^ or fiction 

Jetton 8 f ° r an a PP e tite common to humankind, 
reading. j^ ft f s a } so t be noted that the 

particular motives which lead persons to read 
books of fiction are strangely varied. Many 
people like to read novels having to do with 
subjects in which they already have some 
special interest. As boys with a turn for 
history will easily learn to read Scott, or 
a scientifically minded youngster will take 
naturally to Jules Verne, so an adult's fond- 
ness for adventure, travel, the study of 
manners, for sociology, theology, or ethics 
will often prescribe the sort of novels he will 
read. There are other people who select 
stories that will carry them as far as possible 
from their ordinary pursuits and habits of 
thought. Fiction of this character, chosen 
for its power to afford distraction or even 
dissipation to an overwrought mind, unques- 
tionably serves a useful purpose, though it 



THE STUDY OF FICTION 5 

need scarcely be said that an exclusive reli- 
ance upon trivial and sensational stories as 
furnishing mental relaxation is an indication 
of poverty of intellectual resources. From 
the point of view of the boy who sells novels 
on the train, "a good book" is the book 
that most easily absorbs the attention of the 
traveler, and there is much to be said for 
the train-boy's standard of criticism. Again, 
many of our choices, in the selection of fic- 
tion, turn upon the more or less unconscious 
desire to enlarge the range of our experience. 
Like Pomona in " Eudder Grange," we can 
first wash the dishes and then follow the 
adventures of the English aristocracy ; we 
can journey to the California of 1849 with 
Bret Harte, to a hill camp in India with 
Mr. Kipling, to Paris or the French provinces 
with Balzac. We can thus live vicariously 
the sort of life we might have lived if we 
had been differently circumstanced. We 
seek in novels a compensation for the dullness 
and monotony of actual life, or contrariwise, 
finding actuality too strenuous and stimulat- 
ing, we take refuge in the quiet sanctuary 
opened to us by art. I recall a mining ex- 
pert who had just come East, after a horse- 



6 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

back journey of several thousand miles 
through the most inaccessible and dangerous 
mining camps of the Kocky Mountains. He 
wanted something to read, and his friend, a 
professor of chemistry, whose life was passed 
in his laboratory and lodgings, recommended 
to him a thrilling tale by Ouida, in which 
he himself had been reveling. But the 
mining expert declared the book too exciting, 
and settled down for a whole day's tranquil 
happiness with Mrs. Gaskell's " Cranford " ! 
Smallest of all the classes of fiction readers, 
and yet the most thoroughly appreciative of 
excellence, is that group who approach a 
novel without any preoccupation, who ask 
only that it shall be a beautiful and noble 
work of art. Guy de Maupassant has ex- 
pressed this thought in a frequently quoted 
passage from the preface to " Pierre et Jean." 
Yet it can scarcely be read too often. " The 
public is composed of numerous groups who 
say to us [novelists] : ' Console me, amuse 
me, — make me sad, — make me sentimental, 
— make me dream, — make me laugh, — 
make me tremble, — make me weep, — make 
me think.' But there are some chosen spir- 
its who demand of the artist : ' Make for 



THE STUDY OF FICTION 7 

me something fine, in the form which suits 
you best, following your own temperament.' " 

Kemembering this infinite vari- 
ety of motive in choosing works of to be 
fiction, it becomes easier to avoid 
dogmatism. It is quite impossible to draw 
up a list of " the best novels " for any par- 
ticular person. The variations in human 
nature and aesthetic discipline are too great. 
And yet criticism has a function here which 
should not be overlooked. It should be able 
to pronounce upon the objective qualities of 
any book : to say what it contains, and to 
pass judgment upon the excellence of the 
form in which those contents are clothed. 
When we repeat the old maxim, " De gustibus 
non disputandum est," we should not stretch 
the maxim beyond the very obvious truth 
which it expresses. Tastes are purely sub- 
jective matters, and arguments about them, 
though interesting enough, are futile except 
as evidences of personal temperament and 
training. But the objects of taste, neverthe- 
less, have certain positive qualities which may 
profitably be analyzed and discussed. One 
reader may prefer Trollope's " Framley Par- 
sonage " to Hawthorne's " Scarlet Letter," 



8 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

and another reader's preference be precisely 
the reverse. It may be useless to discuss 
these preferences, but surely criticism can 
pronounce upon the characteristics of the two 
books. It can show their radical differ- 
ence in structure and style. It can point out 
the excellences and limitations of each of 
the two stories. Discussions of this sort are 
often illuminating and valuable; they are 
not to be dismissed as the expression of mere 
personal whim. A man may prefer chocolate 
to coffee as his breakfast beverage ; he knows 
which he likes best, and it may not be worth 
while to dispute with him about his taste. 
But his physician, knowing the chemical pro- 
perties of the two beverages and their rela- 
tive effect upon the patient's digestive sys- 
tem, can probably tell him which drink is 
the more nourishing or stimulating for him. 
The physician's explanation of the positive 
qualities of chocolate and coffee may be com- 
pared to the judgment of a competent critic 
upon the constituent elements of a book. 
After the physician has delivered his opinion, 
it is still possible for his patient to say, " But 
I like coffee best and shall continue to drink 
it ; " and after the critics have declared a 



THE STUDY OF FICTION 9 

book to be commonplace or degrading it may 
be read even more than before. If the phy- 
sician and the critic are blessed with a phi- 
losophical disposition they will now shrug 
their shoulders and murmur, " De gustibus 
non disputandum est." They have done 
their part, and further discussion is useless. 

We touch here upon another of t^ stu a y 
the fundamental differences be- JJ^SSa 
tween fiction readers. There are fj^enuf 
lovers of all the arts who wish to "* 
keep their enjoyment of a beautiful object 
quite separate from an analysis of the ele- 
ments that enter into that enjoyment, who 
prefer to be ignorant of the technical means 
by which the pleasurable end is secured. 
There are connoisseurs of music and painting 
who profess to be guided by their personal 
impressions of the sonata or the landscape 
piece, without reference to any knowledge of 
the mathematics of music or of the laws of 
perspective. A good deal may be said for 
this happy impressionistic fashion of gather- 
ing pleasure, and it has no stouter adherents 
than among novel readers. A very large 
proportion of the readers of a story take no 
interest whatever in the technical side of the 



10 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

novelist's craft; they are interested simply 
in the results. They may possibly listen 
while Stevenson or Mr. Henry James dis- 
courses upon the difficulties and triumphs of 
the novelist's art, but they are chiefly con- 
cerned with the practical quest for another 
good story. The Anglo-Saxon, particularly, 
is not inclined to treat aesthetic questions 
with much concern. He doubts whether the 
serious amateur study of an art increases 
one's enjoyment of that art. It is precisely 
here that this book may part company with 
some readers who have cared to follow its 
opening pages. 

For our discussion will proceed upon the 
tacit assumption that the study of fiction 
does increase one's enjoyment of it ; that 
as the traveler who has studied architec- 
ture most carefully will get the most plea- 
sure out of a cathedral, so the thorough 
student of literary art will receive most en- 
joyment from the masterpieces which that 
art has produced. Upon the practical ap- 
plication of this theory of the relation of 
technical knowledge to enjoyment, some com- 
mon sense must of course be exercised. The 
novel which survives the test of searching 



THE STUDY OF FICTION 11 

analysis, of classroom dissection, — if you 
like, — and gives any pleasure at the last, 
must be a good novel to begin with. If the 
doll is stuffed with sawdust, it is better not 
to poke into its insides. But if the novel be 
the work of a master — if it be " Henry Es- 
mond " or " Adam Bede " or " Ivanhoe " — 
there need be no fear of lessening the stu- 
dent's pleasure. He will soon learn to dis- 
cover the conventional tricks, the common- 
place devices of the hack-writer .; the books 
of the great writers will seem no whit less 
wonderful than before. Knowledge and 
feeling must indeed be kept in their due re- 
lations. To know is good. To feel is bet- 
ter, when it is a question of appropriating 
the form and meaning of a work of art. 
Analysis must be subordinated to synthesis ; 
the details must be forgotten in the cumula- 
tive impression given by the work as a whole. 
Yet the synthetic, comprehensive, sympa- 
thetic view of a masterpiece of fiction is not 
so likely to reveal itself to the casual reader 
as it is to the careful student of the means 
by which the supreme ends of literature are 
attained. 



12 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

What method of fiction study is 

on it 

study. 



Methods 

of fiction it wisest to follow ? In school and 



college, much will depend upon the 
size and proficiency of the classes, the ex- 
tent to which the lecture system is adopted, 
the library facilities, the temperament and 
the training of the individual teacher. The 
independent student, or the member of a 
reading circle or club, must be governed 
more or less by special circumstances. And 
yet there are certain general modes of study 
between which a choice should be made at 
the outset. 

For instance, the English novel 

may be treated historically. Its 
origins and the main tendencies of its de- 
velopment are not difficult to trace. One 
may plan a course of fiction reading which 
shall follow the sequence of history. He 
will find excellent handbooks to guide him. 
The advantages of following the historical 
method in studying any phase of a national 
literature are too obvious to be denied, and 
yet, as far as fiction is concerned, this 
method is not without its drawbacks. Very 
few libraries contain much material of an 
earlier date than the middle of the eight- 



THE STUDY OF FICTION 13 

eenth century, or represent more than a 
handful of novelists from that time to the 
generation of Scott. The minor fiction of 
any epoch is often more truly representative 
than the work of its greater names. But 
even were the material at hand, the tempta- 
tion in dealing with half forgotten or wholly 
forgotten authors is to content one's self with 
secondhand opinions about them, and it is 
precisely this indolent fashion of passing 
along a received opinion which has done 
much to bring the study of English litera- 
ture into disrepute. The reader must get 
the book into his hand if he is to receive 
much benefit from the opinion of the critic 
or historian. Of course every student of 
English fiction ought to know something of 
the lines of its progress in the past — say 
as much as the little books of Professor 
Raleigh 1 or Professor Cross 2 will help him 
to acquire — but it is doubtful whether any- 
thing more than the mastery of such a gen- 
eral sketch can successfully be attempted 

1 The English Novel. By Walter Kaleigh. New York : 
Charles Scribner's Sons, 1894. 

2 The Development of the English Novel. By Wilbur L. 
Cross. New York : The Macmillan Company, 1899. 



14 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

under ordinary conditions. In the case of 
advanced students who have proper library 
facilities, the investigation of -the historical 
development of fiction is too interesting to 
be likely to be neglected, 
criticism Again, the criticism of contem- 

porary em " porary fiction has been found to 
fiction. De attractive and stimulating, both 

in the academic class-room and the literary 
club. Such a course of study traverses the 
immense field of latter-day fiction, and se- 
lects for analysis and judgment striking ex- 
amples of this and that literary tendency. 
From the standpoint of pedagogy, much 
may be said for this method. It requires 
little or no special preparation on the part 
of the student ; he may be assumed to have 
a certain interest in the book of the hour. 
It puts the teacher on a level with the class, 
forcing him to see more truly and to ex- 
press himself more clearly than they, upon 
books that have not yet won a permanent 
place in literature, and consequently have not 
become the object of conventional and hack- 
neyed criticism. Nevertheless the method 
has its dangers. It may tempt the teacher 
to popularize in the bad sense, to try to say 



THE STUDY OF FICTION 15 

clever things about the novel which happens 
to be the latest fashion, to recognize, in 
making a choice among current fiction, the 
market valuation and thus to impress the 
market-value standard upon the very per- 
sons who most need to be taught the falli- 
bility of that standard. It certainly tempts 
the student to criticise — that is, to perform 
the most delicate of mental operations — be- 
fore he* is in possession of any canons of 
criticism. It is always easy to mistake liter- 
ary gossip for literary culture, and a course 
of reading which gives prominence to con- 
temporary books and living authors is likely 
to result in a loss of true literary perspec- 
tive. Good style did not begin with Steven- 
son, and good plots are much older than Dr. 
Conan Doyle. 

While every method has no doubt The study 
its own advantages and disadvan- JJJJJJ e as an 
tages, the method least open to art ' 
objection is that which, assuming that prose 
fiction is an art, devotes itself to the exposi- 
tion of the principles of that art. It takes 
for granted that there is a " body of doc- 
trine " concerning fiction, as there is con- 
cerning painting or architecture or music, 



16 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

and that the artistic principles involved are 
no more incapable of formulation than are 
the laws of the art of poetry, as expressed in 
treatises upon Poetics from Aristotle's day to 
our own. They are indeed largely the same 
principles, as might be expected in the case 
of two sister arts. A student cannot begin 
the study of prose fiction more profitably 
than by endeavoring to grasp the relations 
between this art and the art of narrative po- 
etry. Quite aside from the task of tracing 
historically the process by which the prose 
romance grew out of the epic, there are rich 
fields for investigation in connection with 
such topics as the material common to the 
two arts, the qualities shared by the novelist 
and poet, and the similarity of much of their 
craftsmanship in the sphere of formal expres- 
sion. This suggests a study of their differ- 
ences in the selection of material, their vary- 
ing attitude toward their material, and the 
diverging requirements of effective expres- 
sion in the two media of prose and verse. 
Then the affiliations of fiction with the drama 
must be made clear, through a study of 
such questions as the general similarity in 
construction of the novel and the play, and 



THE STUDY OF FICTION 17 

the advantages and disadvantages of sub- 
stituting the novelist's indirect methods of 
narration and description for the direct re- 
presentation of action by means of the stage. 
Here the student may work out, in a com- 
paratively new territory, the familiar princi- 
ple of Lessing, and assure himself that the 
real field of the novelist is forever separated 
from that of the dramatist by the nature of 
the artistic media which the two men em- 
ploy. The student may well be asked, also, 
to estimate the bearing upon fiction of the 
modern scientific movement, remembering 
Lanier's remark about the novel being the 
meeting ground of poetry and science, and 
endeavoring to ascertain whether upon the 
whole fiction has gained or lost by its contact 
with the scientific spirit. After such a clear- 
ing of the ground as has been suggested, it 
is natural to pass to a detailed study of the 
content of fiction, a study, that is, of charac- 
ter, plot, and setting, in themselves and as 
interrelated. Selecting for classroom mate- 
rial some novels that have stood the test of 
time, methods of character delineation must 
be observed; stationary and developing char- 
acters compared; the relation of main and 



18 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

subordinate characters noted. The nature 
of tragic and comic collisions must be ana- 
lyzed ; the infinitely varied ways of tangling 
and untangling the skein of plot reduced to 
some classification that can be grasped by 
the student. The circumstances or events 
enveloping the action of the story — whether 
it be set in some focal point of history or 
merely keyed to a quiet landscape — must 
be accurately perceived. Setting and plot 
and character, whether analyzed separately 
or grasped in their artistic relations to one 
another, must further be discussed in con- 
nection with the personality of the fiction- 
writer. Yet pupils should be taught to look 
for the mark of personality, not in gossip 
about a novelist's hour of rising and favorite 
breakfast and favorite books, but rather in 
connection with the creative processes upon 
which the stamp of personality is really set. 
The outward facts of an author's life, the 
traits of his character, the history of his 
opinions are significant to us only in so 
far as they have moulded his imagination. 
Finally, we must study the way in which 
differences in the nature of material and dif- 
ferences in personality have resulted in the 



THE STUDY OF FICTION 19 

development of the varying forms of fiction. 
These forms are capable of infinite modifica- 
tion. Each writer's thoughts, dreams, con- 
victions, must be put into words. His mas- 
tery of expression is the final element that 
determines his rank as an artist, and there 
is thus suggested to the student an endlessly 
curious investigation of matters of technique 
and style. 

After some such equipment as is here 
briefly indicated, the student may profitably 
pass to the criticism of contemporary au- 
thors, if he pleases, or to some phase of the 
history of the novel. No one need depre- 
ciate either of those methods of study, but 
nevertheless the most important thing to be 
learned about fiction at the outset is the 
knowledge of what fiction normally is; a 
sense of what it can do and what it cannot 
do ; a recognition of the fact that in the 
most insignificant short story may be seen 
the play of laws as old as art itself; that 
Aristotle and Lessing, in short, wrote with 
one eye on Mr. Kipling and Mr. Hardy. 

As in the case of every other 
fine art, the student of prose fie- and form 
tion finds himself occupied with 



20 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

questions concerning content and form, and 
their relations to each other. Back of every 
art product there is a conception, vaguely or 
definitely present in the artist's mind. Upon 
the character of this conception or content 
depends the significance of the work of art; 
its formal beauty depends upon the artist's 
skill to express his thought or feeling in the 
terms of the particular medium which he has 
chosen. Content and form are therefore 
most intimately related in the artist's per- 
sonality. He can express nothing through 
the concrete medium of his particular art — 
whether it he a pigment or clay or a har- 
mony of musical sounds or a succession of 
words — unless it has first passed through 
the lens of his own nature. It is always 
difficult, and in a certain sense unnatural, to 
make a sharp separation between the ele- 
ments of content and of form. The artist 
himself rarely attempts it. He "thinks in 
color " or feels in terms of musical sound. 
The finer the work of art, the more indis- 
solubly are the elements fused through the 
personality of the artist. And yet it is often 
of the greatest value to the student to at- 
tempt this separate analysis, — to distinguish 



THE STUDY OF FICTION 21 

what has gone into the work of art from the 
external form in which it is clothed, — and 
in prose fiction form and content are more 
easily separable than in poetry or music or 
even painting. 

No one will deny the importance The sul) j ect . 
of the subject-matter with which J^f of 
prose fiction deals. Its field is hu- flction - 
man life itself ; the experience of the race, 
under countless conditions of existence. Fic- 
tion-writers have put into their stories a mass 
of observations, thoughts, and feelings con- 
cerning humankind. The significance of 
these records depends largely upon the sin- 
cerity, the truthfulness, of the writers. Some 
of them have been chiefly occupied with 
rendering the external truth of fact. Others, 
like the great romancers, have cared only for 
the higher truth which is revealed to and 
conveyed by the imagination. But however 
varied the scope of the fiction-writer's activ- 
ity, they all have something to say about life. 
A chapter of first-rate fiction arrests the at- 
tention at every turn. It provokes interest, 
awakens curiosity, challenges comparison with 
one's own experience, and even while it is 



22 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

energizing the imagination, concentrates it. 
Poetry touches us at a higher level, it is true, 
provided it touches us at all. Poetry is a 
finer art than fiction, but for that very rea- 
son there are many readers who cannot come 
under the domination of poetry. They have 
no natural ear for its music, and at twenty 
or twenty-two they find themselves or think 
themselves too old to learn the notes. The 
appeal of prose fiction is more universal : it 
captivates the man who cares mainly for 
facts, as well as the girl whose heart is set 
on fancies. Its scope is so vast, it is so varied 
in its different provinces, its potency to at- 
tract and to impress is so indubitable, that 
the reader who makes no response to it, 
whose powers may not be developed by means 
of it, must be insufferably dull. Further- 
more, prose fiction is, even more than music, 
the great modern art. By means of it we 
are brought into contact with modern ideas, 
with the tumultuous, insistent life of the 
present. And this, for good or evil, is our 
life ; the life which we must somehow live, 
and about which we are conscious of an un- 
appeasable curiosity. 



THE STUDY OF FICTION 23 

Yet the educational value of fic- 

The ques- 
tion consists not merely in its con- tionoi 

tent, in the significance of the 
ideas which it conveys to the mind, but also 
to a considerable extent in the form in which 
those ideas are clothed. In the best fiction 
that form is singularly perfect. The study 
of expression as such, the cultivation of the 
feeling for style, is inseparably associated 
with a well selected course in fiction. The 
special treatises in narration and description, 
for instance, which many teachers of rheto- 
ric are now using, draw their readiest and 
aptest illustrations from the novelists. The 
range of expression, the force and beauty 
with which ideas are uttered by the masters 
of English fiction, is unquestionable. It is 
hard to see how any one can come away 
from a close study of Thackeray or Haw- 
thorne without a new appreciation of form, 
a standard of workmanship ; without learn- 
ing once for all that imagination and pas- 
sion may coexist with a sense of proportion, 
with purity of feeling, with artistic reserve. 
These last are what we agree to call the 
classic qualities. We send boys to Greek 
and Latin literature in the hope that they 



24 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

will catch something of their secret, but if 
boys cannot or will not read Greek and 
Latin, they need not necessarily be unfa- 
miliar with works composed in the classic 
spirit. In a time like ours, when everybody 
writes "well enough," and few try to write 
perfectly, it is no small thing that students 
may be taught through fiction to perceive 
the presence of style, the stamp of distinc- 
tion. That sound Latinist and accomplished 
musician, Henry Nettleship, once wrote to a 
friend a passage about Wagner which is not 
without its bearing upon literature. " Wag- 
ner tries to make music do what it cannot 
do without degrading itself — namely, paint 
out in very loud colors certain definite feel- 
ings as they arise before the composer. The 
older musicians seem to me to aim rather at 
suggesting feeling than at actually exhibit- 
ing it, as it were, in the flesh. I think much 
of Wagner would vitiate my taste, but per- 
haps my head is too full of the older music 
to take in strains to which my nerves are not 
attuned." Professor Nettleship may have 
Jbeen right or wrong about Wagner, but is 
there a better service which the teacher of 
fiction can render a pupil, or the solitary 



THE STUDY OF FICTION 25 

student of literature perform for himself, 
than to make his head so full of the noble 
cadences of Scott and Thackeray, Eliot and 
Hawthorne, that there shall be no room 
there for what has been succinctly described 
as " the neurotic, the erotic, and the Tommy- 
rotic," and all the other contemporary varie- 
ties of meretricious and ignoble art ? 

No one need seek in any novel The novel 
an abstract and theoretical perfec- "i astnetio 
tion. A novel universally signifi- criticlsm - 
cant in content and impeccable in form has 
never been produced. Some of the most 
stimulating and widely influential novels 
have been slovenly written ; and some of 
the most charmingly composed stories have 
been barren of ethical and human signifi- 
cance. But it is the province of aesthetic 
criticism, none the less, to determine the ex- 
tent to which these two elements enter into 
the novel under discussion, to make clear, if 
possible, the relation of the form or content 
of any work of fiction to the mind of the 
artist who produced it. If " there is nothing 
in the work of art except what some man 
has put there," it is interesting to the critic 
to understand not only what intention the 



26 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

man has put into his work but the form in 
which that conception has been expressed. 
To such criticism the novel presents a field 
no less attractive than that of the other fine 
arts. The aesthetic critic regards prose criti- 
cism as one species of literary art. He is 
primarily interested in novels, not for the 
useful information they may contain or the 
ethical guidance they may furnish, but for 
the aesthetic pleasure they impart. His study 
of fiction may lead him into history and bio- 
graphy, into grammar and rhetoric, perhaps 
into ethics and sociology, but what he is 
chiefly endeavoring to do is to ascertain 
the laws that govern the artistic expression 
of the phenomena of human life by means of 
prose narration or description, as compared 
with its expression through the media em- 
ployed by the other arts. Assuming, as we 
have already said, that prose fiction is an art, 
he proceeds to study its principles. He tries 
to formulate the group of facts and laws 
which constitute the "body of doctrine" 
concerning fiction. 

The value of such a study lies 

The value . . • i i i 

of this chiefy m the pleasure it yields, the 

discipline it affords, to the student 



THE STUDY OF FICTION 27 

himself. The vast fiction-reading public is 
skeptical about the very existence of standards 
of judgment. " It is not that there is so 
little taste nowadays/' said some one the other 
day, " there is so much taste, — most of it 
bad." But it is the scholar's business to 
take the world as he finds it and to make it 
a trifle better if he can. The public, lawless 
and inconstant, craving excitement at any 
price, journalized daily, neither knowing nor 
caring what the real aim and scope of the 
novel ought to be, has the casting vote, after 
all, upon great books and little books alike. 
From its ultimate verdict there is no appeaL 
But the ultimate verdict is made up very 
slowly and often contradicts the judgment of 
the hour. Meanwhile the scholar can quietly, 
persistently, assert the claims of excellence. 
From schools and colleges, from reading 
circles and clubs, from isolated and unre- 
garded rooms whose walls are lined with 
books, come, to serve as leaven, people who 
know good work from bad and who know 
why they know it. 



CHAPTER II x 



PROSE FICTION AND POETRY 

" A novelist is on the border-line between poetry and prose, 
and novels should be as it were prose saturated with poetry." 
Leslie Stephen, Daniel Defoe. 

" The great modern novelist is at once scientific and poetic : 
and here, it seems to me, in the novel, we have the meeting, the 
reconciliation, the kiss, of science and poetry." 

Sidney Lanier, The English Novel. 

The quotation which has just been made 
from Sidney Lanier will serve to indicate the 
theme, not only of this chapter, but of the 
two following ones. In tracing the various 
relations of prose fiction, we must take ac- 
count of its affinities with poetry, and with 
that specialized form of poetry, the drama. 
But we have also to reckon with science and 
with the influence of the modern scientific 
movement upon literary art. Let us begin 
by noting the affiliations of prose fiction with 
poetry. 

Relations to Of the three great divisions into 
the lync w hi cn poetry naturally falls, namely, 



PROSE FICTION AND POETRY 29 

dramatic, lyric, and narrative, the first has so 
much in common with prose fiction that their 
lines of relationship will need to be discussed 
in a separate chapter. The province of lyric 

' poetry, on the other hand, is so distinctive 
that its points of contact with prose fiction 
can be easily defined. The lyric is, beyond 
any other form of poetical expression, the 
vehicle of personal emotion. The "lyric 
cry " is the spontaneous overflow of the indi- 

\ vidual passion of the poet. Its joy or pain 
is egoistic. It voices the poet's own heart, — 
no matter how many other human hearts find 
themselves beating in sympathy with his ut- 
terance. Now it is obvious that many novels 
contain lyrical passages, — that is, episodes 
of heightened personal feeling, transports of 
happiness, anguish, or exaltation, which owe 
their inspiration to the same causes as those 
which produce, in the case of a poet, lyric 
poetry. There are certain novels, further- 
more, which represent to a peculiar degree 
the individual admirations and hatreds, the 
ardent convictions and aspirations of their 
authors. Passages in the Bronte novels, 
and whole books by George Sand, may thus 
fairly be called lyrical. But it is evident 



30 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

enough that this highly emotionalized atti- 
tude, this intimate expression of purely per- 
sonal feeling, is very far from being the 
normal mood of the average fiction writer. 

It is in the task of the narrative 

Relations to . „ 

narrative or " epic poet that we find a much 
closer parallel to the work of the 
artist in prose fiction. Both men have a 
story to tell, and by comparing their methods 
of workmanship one may learn a good deal 
about the limitations and relative advantages 
of prose and poetry as media for narration. 
For the narrative poet, like the novelist, finds 
much of his material ready to his hand, and 
much more, no doubt, to be " invented," — - 
that is, selected and recombined from the 
mass of unrelated memories and impressions 
recorded in his mind. There is no better 
way of tracing the inevitable remoulding of 
narrative material by the poetic imagination 
than to take one of the old stories of the 
race and to see how poet and prose romancer 
have in turn dealt with it. The prose ro- 
mance is unquestionably a historic develop- 
ment from narrative poetry. Just as the 
" Iliad " was formed out of hero sagas and bal- 
lads of unknown origin and antiquity, so the 



PROSE FICTION AND POETRY 31 

Homeric poems, in turn, were broken up in 
early mediaeval times into prose fictions like 
those of " Dares the Phrygian " and " Dictys 
the Cretan." The same process takes place 
with the post-classical romances of Alexander, 
the mediaeval Arthurian romances, the stories 
of Charlemagne or the Cid. Verse passes 
over into prose ; prose in turn gets versified 
once more. The material, for the most part, 
is immeasurably old ; " 't is his at last who 
says it best." A study of these changing 
forms — of myth and legend as interpreted 
by different races and epochs and artists — 
throws much light upon the laws both of 
prose fiction and of poetry. It affects more 
or less directly our appreciation of contem- 
porary literary art, for the universal sway of 
the mediaeval prose romance — which itself 
sprang from a poetic imagination, and often 
out of actual embodiment in verse — pre- 
pared the way for the modern novel as we 
know it. 

Yet those who possess neither „,_ 

r ^ The common 

the interest nor the facilities for material of 

fiction and 

the comparative study of mediaeval poetry, 
literature can observe for themselves many of 
the correspondences and differences between 



32 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

prose fiction and poetry. Let us turn, for 
example, to the material common to both 
poet and novelist, the sources from which 
they take the subject-matter of their art. 
Novelist and poet alike are primarily inter- 
ested in human life. They describe it as it 
seems to have manifested itself in the irre- 
vocable past, as it exists to-day, and as it 
may be found in the imaginary, unknown 
world of the future. They are interested in 
all that surrounds human life and affects its 
myriad operations. The external world, as 
it is portrayed by the novelists and poets, is 
chiefly a setting and framework for the more 
complete exhibition of human characteristics. 
The incidents which they narrate have for 
their aim the portrayal of character in this 
or that emergency and coil of actual cir- 
cumstance, or else they are as it were the 
mechanism — the gymnastic apparatus — by 
which life might test and measure itself if it 
pleased. Both novelist and poet, in a word, 
care first of all for persons. The differences 
of temperament and literary craftsmanship 
which separated Tennyson and Thackeray, 
for example, are relatively slight when com- 
pared with the common element of profound 



PEOSE FICTION AND POETRY 33 

curiosity with which these two writers ob- 
served men and women and reflected upon 
the conditions of human society. Indeed, 
the general distinction between men of let- 
ters, like Thackeray and Tennyson and 
Carlyle, and men of science, like Tyndall, 
Huxley j and Darwin, may be roughly indi- 
cated by saying that the former class are 
mainly occupied with persons, and the latter 
class with facts and laws. 

The novelist and the poet, fur- Qxiaimes 
thermore, are alike in their habitual noveifstand 
mental operations. Both of them poet - 
must, to compass any high artistic achieve- 
ment, be thinkers. They must be able to 
generalize from specific examples. But they 
are not so likely as the historian, and surely 
they are far less likely than the scientist, to 
pass from particulars to a formulation of some 
abstract general truth. They are more apt 
to reason by analogy merely, to conclude 
that because the real Lord Hertford did this 
or that, the imaginary Marquis of Steyne, 
some of whose traits were copied from Lord 
Hertford's, would do it likewise. For artistic 
ends, this sort of reasoning is no doubt 
sufficient. The scientist and philosopher 



34 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

may argue that because Lord Hertford was 
wicked all men are wicked. Thackeray will 
be content to assert or imply the concrete 
fact of the wickedness of the Marquis of 
Steyne, reasoning by the light of example 
cast by the real British lord who served as 
the " original " of the imaginary one. 

But although the novelist and 

Dealing with mi pi- 

unknown poet are likely to step out ot their 
province and enter that of the phi- 
losopher and scientist in attempting to pos- 
tulate general truths, it must not be imagined 
that they are limited to any hard-and-fast 
set of specific examples. Though they reason 
concretely rather than abstractly, they deal 
constantly with unknown quantities. They 
are forever asking themselves, and piquing 
the reader's curiosity by propounding to 
him, questions about the potential qualities 
of persons. How will this fictitious person- 
age, more or less well known now to the 
reader, behave in these new circumstances ? 
What will Ulysses do when he faces Penel- 
ope's suitors? Will Hamlet betray any 
excitement while his uncle watches the 
movements of the Player King ? Will Re- 
becca yield to the Templar, and will Harry 



PROSE FICTION AND POETRY 35 

Esmond marry Beatrice or Beatrice's mother ? 
These are the questions — the immensely 
fascinating questions ! — which poets and 
novelists propose to us. If we are sufficiently 
absorbed in the poem or tale, we may have 
our answers ready. The creator of the tale 
or poem is of course bound to have his an- 
swer ready too, and it will turn very largely 
upon his sense of the action possible to a 
given character under a given set of circum- 
stances. 

But the decision or deed of one withpoten . 
personage affects all the others. It tIalvalues - 
brings, as a painter would say, a new set of 
" values " into the composition, just as a 
shaft of sunlight, thrown into a room, alters 
all the color scheme of the room. Or it may 
be more simple to say that the potential 
qualities of the personages of fiction, whether 
in prose or in verse, may be compared to the 
value of the various hands of cards in the 
o^ame of whist. If diamonds are to be 
trumps, rather than hearts or spades or clubs, 
the value of every card in the pack is shifted 
accordingly, and a corresponding scheme of 
play must be instantly evolved. And if, in 
a novel or play, " hearts are trumps," if 



36 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

Hamlet believes the Ghost, or Tito Melema 
resolves to feign ignorance of Baldassarre, 
all the relationships of the persons, all the 
turnings of the plot, are thereby affected. 
The power to evoke the reader's curiosity 
and sympathy for such potential actions and 
situations is an essential element in the skill 
of the imaginative artist. 

The novelist and the poet have 
"artistic" not only this common fund of in- 

language. . 1 . .. 

terest m persons, and a similar 
fashion of making artistic use of the infi- 
nitely varied possibilities of human nature, 
but they are also working side by side in 
giving expression to their thoughts and feel- 
ings through language. Both are using 
what we rather indescriptively call " artistic " 
language, — that is, words chosen for their 
clearness, force, and beauty as vehicles for 
the communication of conceptions and emo- 
tions. Later nineteenth century fiction was 
particularly noticeable for the extent to which 
it availed itself of resources more commonly 
considered to belong to poetry alone. It 
cultivated " prose poetry," — words vaguely 
suggestive, instinct with emotional signifi- 
cance, and used in rhythmical combinations 



PROSE FICTION AND POETRY 37 

that give much of the aesthetic quality of 
verse. Except in the hands of an artist like 
Poe, and indeed too often even with him, 
this use of poetic vocabulary and rhythm 
gives to prose fiction an over-ornamented, 
meretricious effect. But when a master of 
language desires to produce at some crisis of 
his story an effect comparable to the vibrant, 
poignant impression which poetry imparts, 
what does he do ? While holding firmly to 
the cadences of prose, he chooses his words, 
consciously or unconsciously, from the work- 
shop of the poet. Such wonderful lyric 
passages as Richard Fever el's first vision of 
Lucy by the river, the description of the 
Alps in "Beauchamp's Career," the Yar- 
mouth storm in "David Copperfield," are 
examples of the intimate relationship of the 
language of heightened, impassioned prose 
to that of noble poetry. 

The differences between the gen- 
eral functions of the poet and the in selecting 
novelist are no less suggestive. materiaL 
Though they may draw from a common 
fund of observations upon human life, the 
poet is forced to make a much more narrow 



38 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

selection than the novelist. Since his task 
is the communication of emotion by means 
of verbal images, the poet may use only those 
images which affect us emotionally. Theo- 
retically, a poem should contain nothing un- 
poetical, just as a piece of music should be 
free from discords. To assert this, however, 
is not to forbid the use in poetry of much 
material that seems at first view non-poetical, 
even if not actually unpoetical. The great 
poets, like the great musicians, are constantly 
surprising us by the beauty, the intensity of 
feeling, which can be suggested by the most 
unpromising material. But it is nevertheless 
more natural that we should be moved by the 
image of " a violet by a mossy stone " than 
by the image of a " little porringer." It is 
hackneyed criticism to remark that, if the poet 
just quoted had possessed a more unerring 
power of poetic choice from among the ob- 
jects of common life which he celebrated in 
his verse, he would less often have made 
himself ridiculous. 

But the novelist is bound by no 

The novelist . • -i i • • 

has the larger such necessity to avoid the trivial 

liberty. J 

and commonplace. He is not al- 
ways, like the poet, occupied with the imme- 



PROSE FICTION AND POETRY 39 

diate transmission of feeling. He may de- 
vote a whole chapter to mere topography. 
He may chart the scene of his story, as 
Stevenson did before he wrote u Treasure 
Island/' or as Blackmore made a map and 
sketches of the Doone country before he 
wrote his delightful romance. Like Balzac, 
he may write page after page of description 
of the external aspect of the house within 
which the human drama is to be enacted ; or 
like Flaubert, he may spend weeks of re- 
search in order to investigate and describe 
the precise details of a Carthaginian banquet 
table. All this fidelity to fact, this careful 
preparation of the stage scenery, may find its 
justification in the added sense of reality, of 
verisimilitude, conveyed by the story. But 
whether or not always justified in actual 
practice, this large freedom of the novelist 
in the selection of material contrasts very 
strongly with that compulsion which the poet 
feels to make each line in itself a thing of 
beauty. The novelist, in other words, is 
always more likely than the poet to make a 
generous use, in the practice of his art, of 
the material furnished by his daily observa- 
tion of men and things. One may imagine 



40 A STUDY OF PKOSE FICTION 

the three men of letters, Longfellow, Haw- 
thorne, and Mr. Howells, walking down a 
street of Boston side by side. Ont of the 
multitude of objects which would meet their 
eyes as possible raw material for literature, 
it is likely that the poet would make the 
most slender and scrupulous selection. The 
romaucer would probably exercise a wider 
liberty of choice, and would retain in his 
mental notebook many facts and impressions 
which the poet would not find professionally 
useful. But the last of the three, the novelist, 
might conceivably make artistic use of every 
sight and sound and odor of the street, find- 
ing a place for it somewhere or other in his 
series of realistic pictures of contemporary 
American life. 

There is a further difference in 

The differ- , ; '"* 

encein the attitude of typical poets and 

temperament. i i • 

novelists toward their material. 
The temperament of the prose writer is pro- 
verbially cooler. He does not wait to invoke 
the muses, nor does he ordinarily write under 
that " fine frenzy " which often accompanies 
the production of verse. The novelist, as 
such, when compared with the poet, is more 
of a quiet note-taker, a student of character 



PKOSE FICTION AND POETRY 41 

and manners and background. He is, as 
Henry Fielding loved to announce, "a his- 
torian of human nature." This tempera- 
mental and typical difference between the 
two artists, however, makes only the more 
noticeable those great lyric passages found 
here and there in the pages of masters of 
fiction, springing from the depths of emo- 
tion, and voiced with a nobility and beauty 
that we rightly associate with the poets alone. 
We may well believe that in the composition 
of such passages other novelists besides 
George Eliot have written under the over- 
powering impression which she described to 
Mr. Cross : — 

" She told me that in all that she considered her 
best writing there was a ' not herself ' which took pos- 
session of her, and that she felt her own personality to 
be merely the instrument through which this spirit, as 
it were, was acting." Cross, Life of George Eliot. 

The similarity already noticed 
between the tasks of the poet and prose as aif- 
the novelist, in that they both give 
expression through language to quickened 
moods of feeling, must not cause us to over- 
look the different requirements of expression 
in the two media of verse and prose. The 



42 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

poet, thinking as he does in images, is bound 
to use figurative language ; thrilling as he 
must be with emotion, that language natu- 
rally falls into rhythm ; his instinct for 
ordered beauty often leads him to the choice 
of rhyme ; and the nature of his imagination 
compels him to the use of those words and 
cadences whose very sound, through some 
occult and unanalyzable associations and by 
obscure imitative and suggestive potencies, 
stir the deep, if vague, vibrations of the soul. 
In these effects the writer of prose fiction 
may, as we have seen, share to a certain ex- 
tent. In proportion as his emotion rises in 
intensity, his language will tend not only to 
become tropical, but, like the language of the 
impassioned orator, it will tend to fall into 
periods of more or less regularly recurrent 
stress. Yet this rhythmical effect, often to 
be noted in powerful passages of prose fiction, 
is very different from metrical effect ; and 
whenever — as notoriously in some of the 
pathetic paragraphs of Dickens and the ani- 
mal stories of Mr. Seton-Thompson — the 
rhythm becomes the regular iambic beat of 
English blank verse, the writer's intention 
overreaches and defeats itself. With rhyme 



PROSE FICTION AND POETRY 43 

the prose writer has of course nothing to do. 
Upon words of vague emotional connotation 
he sometimes does depend, in rendering cer- 
tain actions of nature or moods of men, but, 
as we have already seen, " prose poetry " is 
at best dubious ground. Most novelists fare 
better when, like Moliere's enlightened hero, 
they speak prose, and know that they are 
speaking it. 

It is not to be denied that the po- 
et's use of metre, rhyme, and tone values of 
color will always give him techni- 
cal resources beyond those of the prose writer. 
He has all the instruments that the prose 
writer possesses, and more besides, if one ex- 
cepts the peculiar cadences, the distinctive 
melody and harmony that belong exclusively 
to prose. It needs a very fine ear to perceive 
these as yet unanalyzed aesthetic values of 
"loosened speech," — the qualities that make 
a sentence of prose give pleasure through its 
sound alone. It may be that we shall some 
day understand this better. Future rhetori- 
cians and metricists may be able to point out 
the tone values, the intricate and unrepeated 
harmonies of a page of Daudet, precisely as 
we now endeavor to analyze the expressional 



44 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

values of a page of Racine. It is quite pos- 
sible that they may assert that the prose 
writer was the rarer artist. But at present 
nothing is to be gained, and much has evi- 
dently been lost, by confusing the terri- 
tories of prose and verse, and producing, 
under the name of " prose poetry " and the 
" poetic short story," a mass of nondescript 
gelatinous rhetoric which can be classified as 
neither flesh, fowl, nor good red herring. 

There is still another way of ap- 

Another . . p \ r 

method of proacning the subject 01 the rela- 
tions of prose fiction to poetry. It 
is perhaps even more interesting than those 
considered hitherto, although, like them, its 
value consists rather in clarifying one's gen- 
eral perception of the variances in literary 
forms than in furnishing exact critical for- 
mulas. The method of approach is this : to 
select writers who have been both novelists 
and poets; to study the different sides of 
their natures that have been expressed 
through the two arts ; and by this means to 
get light upon the character of the arts 
themselves. It is not difficult to see that 
George Eliot, for instance, betrayed through 



PROSE FICTION AND POETRY 45 

the medium of such verse as " Jubal " and 
"How Lisa loved the King" a yearning, 
romantic vein of emotion which could find 
no such natural channel of expression in her 
realistic novels. Thackeray's verse seems at 
times to be an even more direct outpouring 
of his own kindly, melancholy self than is to 
be found in his fiction, in spite of the obvi- 
ous fact that in his stories he is forever com- 
ing upon the stage himself to explain and 
comment upon his characters. The two 
Walter Scotts, the poet and the novelist, 
were quite different persons. The novelist 
was not merely the poet grown older, grown 
tired of competing with Byron for the pub- 
lic favor ; he was a greater, saner, wiser 
man, in closer touch with the enduring 
realities of human nature. But he had lost 
something, too. The rival arts of verse and 
prose were fitted to be the medium of the 
slowly changing outlook upon life which is 
to be observed in passing from the younger 
to the elder Walter Scott, and no one can 
feel this without a new insight into the 
essential nature of verse and prose as tools 
for the literary artist. 



46 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

There is a very familiar phrase of 

The novel as , . . 

"a criticism Matthew Arnold which applies to 
the modern novel even more aptly 
than to poetry. " Poetry," said that great 
critic and admirable poet, " is a criticism of 
life." This remark has often indeed been 
understood in too narrow a sense. Arnold 
meant by criticism an interpretation, an ap- 
preciation of human life upon its ideal side, 
such an interpretation as Wordsworth or 
Dante or Goethe gives us. But the power to 
do this through the medium of verse is rare, 
and it has often happened that poets like 
Arnold, like his master Sainte-Beuve, like our 
own Mr. Howells, have gradually ceased to 
compose verse, and have turned their atten- 
tion more and more to prose criticism. It is 
true that criticism as produced by such men is 
in itself literature ; it may possess qualities of 
high and permanent worth. But such critics 
as these would probably be the first to admit 
that, compared with poetry of equally high 
relative position in its class, criticism is a 
second best. However stimulating it may 
be to the intelligence, however fortifying 
and tonic to the will, the natural instincts of 
the heart teach that poetry is somehow per- 



PROSE FICTION AND POETRY 47 

forming a higher office than prose criticism. 
It deals on the whole with nobler aspects of 
things, and deals with them in a nobler way. 
The same is true of the rivalry between the 
novelist and the poet. Both may be seers, 
but the novelist is compelled by the very 
terms of his art to say what he sees, while 
the poet sings it. And the singer is above 
the sayer. Whether one is comparing the 
differing gifts of a single writer like Victor 
Hugo, who wrought such marvels in both 
the arts — " Victor in Drama, Victor in Ko- 
mance " — or comparing the typical poet 
with the typical novelist, or studying the his- 
tory of those prose romances and poems 
which are a part of the intellectual heritage 
of the race, it becomes clear that poetry is 
the finer art. Yet the greatest triumphs of 
prose fiction have been won by those books 
in which the interpretation of life, the crea- 
tive imagination, and the mastery of lan- 
guage have been akin to those revealed 
by enduring poetry. Hence it is that the 
student of prose fiction should constantly 
observe, not the romancer alone, but also the 
aims and methods of the poet and the 
dramatist. 



CHAPTER III 

FICTION AND THE DRAMA 

" It may fairly be claimed that humanity has, within the past 
hundred years, found a way of carrying a theatre in its pocket ; 
and so long" as humanity remains what it is, it will delight in 
taking out its pocket-stage and watching the antics of the 
actors, who are so like itself and yet so much more interesting. 
Perhaps that is, after all, the best answer to the question, 
' What is a novel ? ' It is, or ought to be, a pocket-stage." 
F. Marion Crawford, The Novel : What It Is. 

The terms We have already noted some of 

'' drama "Ts d the general relations between prose 
here used. fiction and poetry, and have re- 
marked that one of the chief poetic types, 
the drama, has such intimate affiliations 
with the novel as to deserve treatment in a 
special chapter. In commenting upon the 
similarities and differences of function that 
characterize these two literary forms, it will 
be more simple to use the term " novel " in 
a wide sense, as including the romance and 
short story, and the term " drama " as in- 
dicating plays written both in prose and in 
verse, but always as compositions intended 



FICTION AND THE DRAMA 49 

for actual stage representation. The " closet 
drama" — the play that is not intended to 
be played — is an isolated though a very 
interesting literary species which does not 
fall within the range of the present chapter. 
Using: the " novel," then, as 

° . . The object of 

synonymous with narrative prose both novel 

n i i ^ i >5 and drama: 

nction, and the " drama as mean- characters in 
ing the acted play, we may begin 
by observing that both novel and drama 
have for their object the exhibition of char- 
acters in action. How far a given personal- 
ity can be made to reveal itself through 
visible action and audible words upon the 
stage must in each individual instance be 
decided by the dramatist. Mere physical 
" business " upon the boards, exits and en- 
trances, crossing from left to right and back 
again, may not afford that kind of dramatic 
" action " which makes manifest the essential 
character of a stage personage. On the 
other hand, Hamlet's irresolution, his failure 
to act, is in itself a positive dramatic force ; 
it may be reckoned upon like any other. 
The element of external action is indeed less 
necessary to the novel, because the author 
can describe mental attitudes instead of visu- 



50 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

alizing them for the eye of the spectator. 
He can sometimes rouse our intense curios- 
ity and eagerness by the mere depiction of 
a psychological state, as Walter Pater has 
done in the case of Sebastian Storck and 
other personages of his "Imaginary Por- 
traits." The fact that "nothing happens" 
in stories of this kind may be precisely what 
most interests us, because we are made to 
understand what it is that inhibits action. 
But the great majority of novels and plays 
represent human life in nothing more faith- 
fully than in their insistence upon deeds. 
It is through action — tangible, visible action 
upon the stage, or, in the novel, action sug- 
gested by the medium of words — that the 
characters of the play and the novel are or- 
dinarily revealed. In proportion as high art 
is attained in either medium of expression 
this action is marked by adequacy of motive, 
by conformity to the character, by progres- 
sion and unity. 

What is more, there are marked 

Similarities . 7 

in construe- similarities in the general construc- 
tion — the architecture, so to say 
— of the two literary forms which we are 
considering. Suppose we take up the sepa- 



FICTION AND THE DRAMA 51 

rate portions of the drama, those " parts " 
and " moments " of its technical structure 
which have interested students of dramatic 
literature from the time of the Greek rhet- 
oricians to our own. Each one of these 
various functions, performed by a definite 
portion of the play, has its parallel in the 
architectonics of prose fiction. 

In both play and novel, for in- T h e exposi- 
stance, it is the first task of the tion ' 
author to explain the characters and circum- 
stances which are essential to an understand- 
ing of the plot. Upon his skill in so presenting 
his personages and their surroundings that 
they may be intelligently understood at the 
outset depends a large measure of his suc- 
cess. The first act of a play is thus spoken 
of as the act containing the " exposition." 
Like the overture of a musical composition, 
it indicates the nature of the whole. Now 
the opening chapters of a novel, or the first 
lines of a short story, have a precisely simi- 
lar function to perform. It is true that in 
the novel the exposition may be far more 
deliberate. The play-wright has not a mo- 
ment to lose after the curtain has once 
risen ; every moment of opening action 



52 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

counts heavily for or against his chances of 
interesting the audience in the personages 
of the play. But Walter Scott and Thack- 
eray and Dickens ramble along in chapter 
after chapter of pleasant prologues without 
appreciably advancing towards the real story 
which they have to tell, — so confident were 
these authors, no doubt, of their power to 
secure the attention of their readers, and so 
unerringly, in general, did they utilize all 
their apparently trivial descriptive and nar- 
rative details in instinctively forecasting the 
final cumulative effect of the tale. 

These details are not only more 

Accurate pre- . J 

sentation of deliberately presented in the novel 

detail. J r 

than would be possible in the play, 
but they are also more accurately presented. 
There is less for us to guess at. The novel- 
ist, in spite of all the suppressions which his 
art makes necessary, tells us more, and leaves 
us less often to our own inferences, than the 
play-wright. When the story-writer describes 
his heroine, we doubtless see her less dis- 
tinctly than if the dramatist had sent her 
down the stage for our inspection, but 
whereas the dramatist is forced to let us in- 
fer what is in her mind by her appearance, 



FICTION AND THE DRAMA 53 

her facial expression, gestures, words, and 
the attitude of other personages respecting 
her, the novelist can tell us precisely and at 
once what she is thinking about and what 
she is likely to do. But whatever may be 
the differences in technique, both novelist 
and dramatist are bent first of all upon in- 
troducing their characters. 

Then comes, commonly in the 

7 J The "excit- 

middle or towards the end of the ing" force or 

"moment." 

first act of the play, and not far 
from the beginning of a well constructed 
tale, what is called the " exciting (or " in- 
citing ") force " or " moment." Something 
happens, and even though this happening 
may be apparently insignificant, it begins to 
affect the entire course of the plot. The 
Ghost appears to Hamlet ; the witches con- 
front Macbeth ; Cassius talks with Brutus ; 
the clash of interest begins ; the lines of 
party or of faction, of individual ambition 
or resolve, are suddenly apparent. In the 
tale this " moment " — the little weight that 
turns the scale — is frequently quite undra- 
matic and unimpressive, but it can usually 
be pointed out. In " Pendennis " it is 
where the major receives the letter from his 



54 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

sister which tells about Arthur's infatuation 
for Miss Fotheringay. In " The House of 
the Seven Gables " it is the opening of the 
shop after all the years of dust and silence. 
In a romance of adventure, like Stevenson's 
"Kidnapped," it is the orphan boy leaving 
home at early dawn to seek his fortune up 
and down the world. 

The develop- No sooner are the currents of 
ment# action fairly flowing, both in play 

and in novel, than their speed and power per- 
ceptibly increase. Throughout the second, 
and into the third act of a five-act play, we 
witness what Freytag called the " heighten- 
ing ; " that is, not merely quickened move- 
ment, but more passionate feeling, a closer 
contact of personal forces, a more violent 
collision of wills, a greater complication of 
the various threads of the plot, the entangle- 
ment of a greater number of personages in 
the intrigue or the achievement upon which 
the play is based. In the novel this develop- 
ment is not necessarily, as upon the stage, 
accompanied and indicated by a more rapid 
and emphasized external action. It may pro- 
ceed through the slow growth of character 
alone, and only its silently accumulated re- 



FICTION AND THE DRAMA 55 

suits be in due time manifest. Dorothea 
Casaubon in " Middlemarch " and Tess in 
" Tess of the D'Urbervilles " pass through 
such periods of almost unregarded prepara- 
tion, of gradual ripening for the great crises 
of their lives. Thus chapters describing 
Dorothea's life after her marriage and Tess's 
sojourn in Froom Vale belong to the " devel- 
opment " of the story, but are unexciting 
enough in themselves. But the best novel, 
surely, like the best play, is that in which 
inner character and outward action are de- 
veloped simultaneously ; in which the growth 
of mind and heart and will are expressed 
through tangible and striking scenes. In 
this respect "Vanity Fair" and "A Tale 
of Two Cities" and "Adam Bede " and 
" Pan Michael " — to choose stories of very 
different types — accomplish what Shake- 
speare accomplished in " Macbeth." They al- 
low us to watch the growth or the decay of 
a soul even while we are fascinated by a 
spectacle. 

Near the middle of the typical 
play — commonly in the third act 
of a five-act drama — is what is variously 
called the " highest point," the " turning 



56 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

point/' the "climax," or the "grand cli- 
max." It is the scene where the dramatic 
forces which are contending for the mastery- 
are most evenly balanced. One cannot say 
whether the hero or the intriguer, the protag- 
onist or the antagonist, will conquer. It is 
the point of greatest tension between the op- 
posing powers. It is watched by the specta- 
tors with something* of the f eeling 1 with which 
one sees a sky-rocket turn in its upward 
flight and begin its fall. This momentary 
equilibrium between the " rising " and the 
"falling" action of the play may not ne- 
cessarily call forth the greatest excitement 
from spectators. That may be reserved for 
the catastrophe, which may be compared to 
the bursting of the sky-rocket as it nears the 
end of its downward flight. And yet the 
great climax scenes in Shakespeare, for in- 
stance, are stamped indelibly upon the mem- 
ory : Macbeth at the banquet ; Lear in the 
hut ; Csesar at the senate house ; Hamlet 
watching the play within the play. 
The "tragic I n a tragedy the grand climax 
moment." - g usua ]]y ini mediately preceded or 
followed by what is called the " tragic mo- 
ment," — the event which makes a tragic 



FICTION AND THE DRAMA 57 

outcome unavoidable and foredooms to fail- 
ure every subsequent struggle of the hero 
against his fate. The speech of Mark An- 
tony, the killing of Polonius, the escape of 
Fleance, are examples of the " tragic mo- 
ment/' and it will be seen how closely this is 
associated with what the Greeks named the 
" turn," — the beginning of the " falling 
action." 

It is not often that a novel pre- Climaxin 
sents such striking examples of thenoveL 
skillfully constructed climax. In the Spanish- 
born picaresque romance, — so named be- 
cause its hero is a picaro, a rogue, — and in 
the modern romance of adventure, all that 
is usually attempted is to invent a brisk suc- 
cession of incidents and situations, designed 
to capture the attention of the reader by any 
device, rather than to conform rigidly to 
those technical conventions upon which the 
success of the play-wright is constantly depen- 
dent. In the novel of manners or the novel 
of character, instead of a " grand climax " 
there is likely to be a series of less noticeable 
scenes which reveal or determine the person- 
ality of the men and women involved. There 
could scarcely be a better illustration of the 



58 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

difference in method, as between the drama 
and the novel, than that scene in George 
Eliot's " Middlemarch " where Lydgate, at 
the meeting of the directors of the hospital, 
is forced to declare his vote for either Fare- 
brother or Tyke. It is a scene of thrilling 
psychological interest. A human soul is 
hanging in the balance ; but the situation is 
wholly lacking in dramatic impressiveness, 
judged from the point of view of the play- 
wright. Yet in " Vanity Fair " the chapter 
which describes howEawdon Crawley knocked 
down the Marquis of Steyne is very obviously 
the "grand climax" of the book. It marks 
the " highest point " in Becky's worldly for- 
tunes, and her detection by her husband is the 
" turn " with which begins the long episode 
of her losing fight with society. In the 
stage version of " Vanity Fair " it is equally 
interesting to note the climactic quality of 
this scene. But it may be said in general 
that the novel has a far greater freedom of 
method than the play, as regards the use 
either of a grand climax or of a series of cli- 
maxes. So entirely lacking in dramaturgic 
possibilities is the plot of many a story that the 
climax is identified with the conclusion, and 



FICTION AND THE DRAMA 59 

one reads on with the simple desire to learn 
" how it comes out/' rather than to watch 

— as upon the stage — the struggle of the 
embodied forces upon which the outcome 
depends. 

We have already implied that 

The " fall." 

the " highest point " or " climax "• 
of a typical drama marks the division of the 
two processes out of which the plot of a play 
is made. These processes are frequently de- 
scribed as the " complication " — the weaving 
together of the various threads of interest 

— and the " resolution " — the untangling 
of the threads again. " Tying " and " un- 
tying " are still simpler terms ; and the 
French word for untying, the denotement, has 
grown familiar to us, though it is often used 
for what is technically known as the " catastro- 
phe," rather than as descriptive of the entire 
"falling action," of which the catastrophe 
is only the final stage. Freytag was one of 
the first to point out that, in planning the 
" fall " of a tragic drama, the play-wright 
manages to maintain the interest of the spec- 
tators by striking scenic effects, by passages 
of intense psychological interest, like Juliet's 
monologue, or Lady Macbeth' s sleep-walking 



60 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

scene, or by making the hero struggle su- 
perbly against the " counterplayers." If the 
play be a comedy, he interposes new obstacles 
in the path of the lovers, or he removes these 
only to bring to view obstacles more for- 
midable still. 

The "final Both in comedy and in tragedy 

suspense." there is the " moment of final sus- 
pense," when the sinister or happy fortune 
presaged by the general nature of the " fall- 
ing action " seems contradicted, or at least 
held in suspense, by some unforeseen occur- 
rence, like Macbeth's triumphal announce- 
ment of the prophecy that he was not to be 
slain by any man born of woman, or the news 
that comes to Eichard Third that the fleet 
of his rival, Richmond, has been destroyed 
by a storm. 1 

The catas- And then comes swiftly the catas- 

trophe, trophe, — the inexorable doom of 

tragedy, the " Bless you, my children ! " of 
conventional comedy, — the final allotment 
of fortune to the personages of the play. It 
must always seem reasonable, must appear to 
be of "the nature of things." However 

1 These illustrations are drawn from Freytag's Tech- 
nique of the Drama. 



FICTION AND THE DRAMA 61 

much one may grieve over the pity and ter- 
ror of it, it must be recognized as essentially, 
though perhaps mysteriously, just. The vis- 
ible catastrophe, like the death of Othello 
or of Hamlet, is the outward symbol of what 
has already taken place within the soul. It 
embodies for sense-perception, as all art 
must, the dramatist's thought; it sets the 
seal of unity upon his completed work. 
What parallel does prose fiction 

re i i • > i it o Thedenou- 

oner to the dramatist s handling ot ment in 
the " resolution," the " untying," of 
his plot ? In the so-called " plot novel " the 
parallel is very close indeed. The first half 
of a detective story often occupies itself with 
knotting as firmly as possible the threads of 
the mystery ; the second half is devoted to 
a skillful untangling. When the hero or 
heroine of fiction has once made a fatal 
choice, the " fall " proceeds along precisely 
the same lines as in the drama. The drama 
has been defined as made up of impulse, 
deed, and consequence, and in depicting the 
" consequence " the novelist can adjust out- 
ward action to inward struggle as finely as 
the dramatist. Indeed the tragic degenera- 
tion of such a character as Tito Melema in 



62 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

" Komola " can be expressed more sensitively 
by the methods of narration and description 
than by the relatively coarser effects neces- 
sary for visible representation upon the stage. 
Novels as far apart in their aims and methods 
of workmanship as Kingsley's " Here ward " 
and Mrs. Humphry Ward's "Eleanor" have 
in common this admirable adjustment of inner 
mood to outward event. In psychological 
romances like Hawthorne's " Marble Faun " 
and " Scarlet Letter," the denoument takes 
place in the heart and mind of the charac- 
ters ; the author is so concerned with this, 
his immediate purpose, that he frequently 
becomes indifferent to the interests of exter- 
nal action. When Hawthorne's publishers 
insisted upon his writing an additional chap- 
ter to the " Marble Faun," in order to tell 
what became of the various personages of 
the story, he good-naturedly complied ; but 
it is evident that his task was perfunctory. 
Indeed it may be said that in proportion as 
the purely psychological interest predomi- 
nates in a story it becomes less necessary to 
arrange the external catastrophe with an eye 
to dramatic effect. The great creators of 
character in fiction have the art of making 



FICTION AND THE DRAMA 63 

us believe in the real existence of the men 
and women they portray. They throw a 
vivid light upon the few links of the endless 
chain of human existence and activity ; and 
though the story stops we have an irresistible 
impression that the men and women are con- 
tinuing to live. Their personality so domi- 
nates the imagination that we refuse to think 
of them as merely pigeon-holed in some of 
the final-chapter categories, such as " happily 
married" or "dead." They are alive for- 
evermore to the sympathetic imagination. 

Rather curiously, the romance 
of mere adventure, like " The Three ment in 
Musketeers," often treats the de- 
noument with singular unconcern. What in- 
terests us here is not so much the characters 
as the adventures which beset them upon the 
road, and when all the journeyings are ended 
it makes little difference in what room of the 
inn the personages find rest. It is the more 
normal type of fiction, where both character- 
interest and the interest of outward action 
are intimately joined, that affords in its de- 
nouments the closest parallels to the denou- 
ments of the conventional drama. It is 
closer to the realities of life than either the 



64 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

romance of pure psychology or the romance 
of pure adventure, for it conceives of the 
human mind and heart, not as something 
apart from external deeds, nor again of deeds 
as something intrinsically interesting, but 
rather of soul and deed together, inextricably 
joined. 

We have seen that the novel 

The novel 

and the play affords to the artist an opportunity 

as modes of , , 

reaching the to commiuiicate, by means 01 nar- 
ration and description, certain im- 
ages which the dramatist can present in tan- 
gible, visible form. But the indirect method 
of presentation, by means of narration and 
description, is perfectly fitted to the gifts 
and circumstances of certain writers. Char- 
lotte Bronte's ignorance of the world of 
action would probably have made it impossi- 
ble for her to turn play-wright, but, apart 
from some obvious faults of unreality, it 
scarcely affected her achievement as a novel- 
ist. Authors with a far wider experience of 
life, like Cooper or Hawthorne, would have 
found their ignorance of the technique of 
the stage a formidable obstacle to communi- 
cating with the public through that medium. 



FICTION AND THE DRAMA 65 

Many writers, furthermore, shrink from the 
associations of the stage. Although there is 
far more pecuniary profit to the author from 
a successful play than from the average suc- 
cessful novel, and although in some coun- 
tries, notably in France, the authorship of a 
play brings more instant personal recogni- 
tion, play-writing demands a long and ardu- 
ous period of apprenticeship. Even after 
years of familiarity with technical stagecraft, 
it is far more difficult to get a manuscript 
play accepted than it is to secure publication 
for a manuscript novel. Most authors choose, 
or are forced to follow, the easier path. If 
they really have something to say, they 
have the satisfaction of knowing that their 
novels bring them into touch with a more 
varied public than that which patronizes the 
theatre. The novel reaches thousands of 
isolated persons, as well as a community of 
pleasure seekers. Then, too, it calls forth, 
at least in its more powerful examples, a 
more sustained, uninterrupted emotional ac- 
tivity than is afforded by a play. Dramatic 
representations last but three or four hours 
at most ; a great novel frequently dominates, 
possesses, the imagination of the reader for 



66 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

many days. Not that the play is forgotten, 
but the book, after all, seems to come into a 
more enduring, permanent relation with its 
reader. 

Besides these general and per- 

Advantages . ° x 

of the novel haps too theoretical differences be- 
as a medium. - T > 111 

tween the novelist s and the drama- 
tist's modes of addressing their public, there 
are certain definite and indisputable advan- 
tages which the novelist possesses. One is 
the power to convey mental phenomena with 
exactness. Although the dramatist, by the 
simple expedient of raising a curtain, can 
make us see the heroine as she sits in her 
chair, and cause us to apprehend her physi- 
cal characteristics more clearly than any 
writer could convey them to us, the novelist 
has a great advantage when he wants to tell 
us what is passing in the heroine's mind. 
He is not forced, like the dramatist, to make 
us infer what she is thinking about ; he is 
not left to the mercy of the actress's inter- 
pretation of his lines; he tells us precisely 
what the heroine thinks and feels. Further- 
more, as the chapter on Setting will show, 
the novelist has it in his power to convey 
the effect of many natural phenomena, as for 



FICTION AND THE DRAMA 67 

instance the sea, far more perfectly through 
words, than any stage carpenter and scene 
painter and expert with electric lights can 
possibly contrive to do. But the greatest 
advantage of the novelist, no doubt, lies in 
his liberty to introduce material which is not 
strictly concerned, as every line of the drama- 
tist's should be, with the exhibition of charac- 
ters in action. He has some measure of the 
poet's "unchartered freedom" to depict 
beautiful objects, unconcerned with their im- 
mediate bearing upon the problem in hand. 
He is by turns scientist, sociologist, explorer, 
and historian, conveying all sorts of infor- 
mation about the world we live in, in its 
infinite varieties of aspect and appeal. In 
his own comment upon the personages and 
action of his story, he usurps the function 
of the ancient chorus, and turns philosopher. 
He may forget his story, for the time being, 
in these wise or profound or playful " asides" 
to his readers. Yet though the laws of 
purely objective art, both in drama and in 
prose fiction, would deny him this privilege, 
" he will still be prating," and in this very 
weakness — as artistic theory would judge it 
— of novelists like George Eliot and Thack- 



68 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

eray, we discover one of the chief sources of 
their actual power over the reader. 

On the other hand, it may rightly 

Compensating , , . , „ 

advantages of be claimed ior stage representation 

the stage. •• . -. 

that it compasses certain results 
that are out of the reach of narrative fiction. 
Perhaps the most obvious of these advan- 
tages is the assistance which stage setting 
affords to the imagination of the spectator. 
Many readers lack the power of visualizing 
the imaginary scenes depicted by the novel- 
ist, and hence they rarely or never feel 
themselves in the presence of real persons or 
surrounded by real circumstances. But the 
modern play-wright is so varied in resource, 
so fertile in mechanical expedients, that he 
can create a stage setting of extraordinary 
verisimilitude to the conditions demanded 
by the particular play. A feeble, untrained, 
unpictorial imagination thus finds itself as- 
sisted in every scene. It is true that too 
much help may often be given. The rude 
sign-posts, " Athens " or " Rome," hung out 
upon the stage of the Elizabethan theatre, as 
the sole indication of a shift of scene, doubt- 
less forced the audience to a free, playful 
exercise of fancy which put them in accord 



FICTION AND THE DRAMA 69 

with the dramatist's mood. They met him 
half-way, and agreeing like children to play 
a game with conventional symbols, entered 
into it perhaps all the more heartily upon 
that account, just as imaginary sugar lumps, 
at a " make-believe " tea-party, often give 
more pleasure than real ones. There is lit- 
tle doubt that the over-elaborate stage setting 
of the present day sometimes dulls the imagi- 
nation by giving it no exercise. But the 
theatrical audience is a strangely composite 
one, and the pictorial imagination of many 
spectators needs all the help that can be 
given to it. In the realistic setting that 
represents a hotel office, a steamboat land- 
ing, a telephone exchange, or a department 
store, there is an appeal to the spectator's 
knowledge and sympathy, a gratification of 
his sense of recognition, which yield notable 
satisfaction. The pleasure afforded by the 
lavish mounting of many romantic plays is 
of a higher type aesthetically. It is more 
useful, too, in stimulating the imagination 
of many spectators who would not and could 
not respond to the detailed descriptions 
drawn by the novelist. In this assistance 
that it gives to the imagination of the tired 



70 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

or uncultivated spectator the theatre bases 
one of its most unquestioned claims to the 
support of the public. 

individual Furthermore, it is undeniable 

moments. tbat ^ p l a y_ wr igbt is able to em- 
phasize individual moments of action with a 
vividness and force quite beyond the reach 
of the novelist. The often-quoted remark 
about the acting of Edmund Kean, that it 
was like " reading Shakespeare by flashes of 
lightning," contains a truth applicable to 
many varieties of dramatic art. Play-wright 
and actor have it in their power to stamp a 
single scene, line, attitude, ineffaceably upon 
the memory. The " curse of Home " in 
Richelieu, Mercutio's " a plague on both 
your houses," Lady Macbeth' s talking in her 
sleep, all represent legitimate dramatic ef- 
fects which for intensity, direct and immedi- 
ate penetrating power, are beyond the scope 
of the novelist. 

It is easy to multiply these il- 
zationof lustrations of the differences in 
method which separate the art of 
the novelist from that of the dramatist. A 
more practical and instructive way of com- 
paring the technique of the two arts, how- 
ever, is to study the dramatization of novels. 



FICTION AND THE DRAMA 71 

It may well be doubted whether the recent 
popularity of such dramatizations has been 
beneficial either to the stage or to the novel, 
but it is easy for any student to draw useful 
comparisons between the two modes of pre- 
senting characters in action. Let him read 
"Vanity Fair/' " The Scarlet Letter," "Dr. 
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," " The Little Minis- 
ter/' " The Prisoner of Zenda," " The Chris- 
tian," or " Tess of the D'Urbervilles," and 
watch, carefully and repeatedly, the plays 
that have been constructed from these sto- 
ries. He will learn, better than any abstract 
analysis can possibly teach him, the inexor- 
able conditions under which the play-wright 
is obliged to work, and the inevitable modi- 
fications which the play-wright is forced to 
make in the material supplied for him by the 
novelist. The chief lesson to be learned is 
this : that the novel and the play are not 
merely two different modes of communicat- 
ing the same fact or truth. It is rather that 
the different modes result in the communi- 
cation of a different fact. It is impossi- 
ble that Thackeray's " Vanity Fair " should 
be presented upon the stage. Thackeray's 
" Vanity Fair " is a complex of personal im- 
pressions and convictions about life, trans- 



72 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

mitted to us by a specific art of which 
Thackeray was a master. A dramatized 
" Vanity Fair " can no more transmit those 
impressions than a novelized " Hamlet " can 
give us Shakespeare's " Hamlet." The field 
of the dramatist, in a word, is marked off 
from that of the novelist by the nature of 
the artistic medium which each man em- 
ploys. Which medium is better depends 
wholly upon the personality and the train- 
ing of the artist, and the nature of the fact 
or truth he wishes to convey to the public. 
It is enough for our present purposes to re- 
mark that the two media differ as completely 
as bronze and pigment, or marble and musi- 
cal tone, and that the success of any artist 
depends largely upon his instinctive or ac- 
quired sense of the possibilities or limitations 
of the material he chooses. As for the 
dramatization of novels, it should never be 
forgotten that a novel is typically as far 
removed from a play as a bird is from a 
fish ; and that any attempt to transform one 
into the other is apt to result in a sort of 
flying-fish, a betwixt-and-between thing, — 
capable, indeed, of both swimming and fly- 
ing, but good at neither. 



CHAPTEE IV 

FICTION AND SCIENCE 

" To ascertain and communicate facts is the object of science ; 
to quicken our life into a higher consciousness through the feel- 
ings is the function of art. But though knowing and f eeling are 
not identical, and a fact expressed in terms of feeling affects us 
as other than the same fact expressed in terms of knowing, yet 
our emotions rest on and are controlled by our knowledge. What- 
ever modifies our intellectual conceptions powerfully, in due time 
affects art powerfully." Dowden, Studies in Literature. 

Both the scientist and the artist „ 

Man as 

are constantly dealing: with man, material for 

J m P . 7 the scientist. 

and yet there is a striking contrast 
between the characteristic ways in which the 
scientist and the artist confront their human 
material. The scientist's interest in the hu- 
man organism begins long before the dawn of 
conscious life in the individual. He studies 
the laws of heredity, the influence of race, 
family, and climate, as they affect the physical 
and mental characteristics of the new human 
being. He follows the child's bodily growth 
and intellectual development with the keen- 
est scrutiny, finding here the key to many 



74 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

puzzling problems relating to the past history 
and the future welfare of the race. As the 
child matures into manhood or womanhood, 
every physical characteristic or social relation 
of the individual becomes the object of the 
scientist's closest study. Experts in ethics 
and economics, in sociology, law, govern- 
ment, in short in all the departments of social 
and political science, make man the object 
of their investigations and theories. Fur- 
thermore, all the sciences dealing primarily 
with things — such as chemistry, physics, 
astronomy, geology — find their incentive 
and their ultimate justification in the assist- 
ance they give to man in his ceaseless effort 
to understand himself and his place in the 
universe. In a word, the aim of the scientist 
is to know man as he is, in all his relations. 
„ But how different is the func- 

Man as 

material for tion of the artist ! When he turns 

the artist. 

to the human being in search of 
material for his art, his chief endeavor is to 
make something beautiful. With this pur- 
pose the sculptor represents, with more or 
less fidelity to actual fact, the outlines of the 
human form. The painter depicts the light 
reflected from the human face and figure. 



FICTION AND SCIENCE 75 

The poet translates the emotions of men and 
women into conventional forms of beauti- 
fully ordered speech. The musician em- 
bodies man's inarticulate desires, his vaguest 
dreams, in harmonies of sound. All these 
artistic activities imply knowledge of men 
and women ; but it is obvious that knowledge 
is not with the artist, as it is with the scien- 
tist, an end in itself. It is only one element 
in his chief task. That task is to create 
some beautiful object. It is necessary to 
keep this fundamental distinction clearly in 
mind in endeavoring to estimate the nature 
and extent of the influence of the modern 
scientific movement upon the art of fiction. 
It will be readily recognized that FlctIon as 
fiction, like every other depart- Jj^i* 7 
ment of human activity, has not science - 
escaped the impact of that widespread and 
deep interest in physical science which was 
one of the most marked characteristics of the 
nineteenth century. The influence of this 
movement may be traced in almost every 
field of literature. The constant reference 
in Tennyson's later poetry to the doctrine of 
evolution, and the application of the theory 
of heredity in the problem-plays of Ibsen, 



76 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

illustrate the scientific cast of modern litera- 
ture quite as effectively as George Eliot's 
masterly studies in environment, or the sci- 
entific romances of M. Jules Verne or Mr. 
H. G. Wells. But it has happened more fre- 
quently in fiction than in other departments 
of literary art that the writer has set himself 
deliberately to the work of scientific or 
pseudo-scientific demonstration, while avail- 
ing himself ostensibly of the conventional 
devices which are a part of the novelist's 
stock in trade. The most famous, and upon 
the whole the most influential, example of 
fidelity to a method supposedly scientific has 
been that of M. Zola. In his well known 
essay entitled " Le Roman Experimental," 1 
he has explained and defended the methods 
which he has endeavored to follow in compos- 
ing the novels of the Rougon-Macquart series. 
The thesis of the essay can be summed up in 
a few sentences. 

„ M. Zola begins by pointing out 

Experimen- the difference between a science of 

tal." 

observation, like astronomy, and a 
science based upon experiments, like chem- 

1 There is an English translation by B. M. Sherman. 
London and New York: Cassell, 1893. 



FICTION AND SCIENCE 77 

istry. The observer, he says, is only the 
photographer of phenomena ; but the experi- 
menter can alter the conditions, and, subject- 
ing phenomena to these new conditions, can 
prove or disprove some hypothesis. In sim- 
ilar fashion a novelist can " experiment " 
upon a character, and study its behavior 
under the particular conditions to which the 
novelist chooses to subject it. Chemistry 
and physics have now become exact sciences. 
Physiology and psychology are likewise sub- 
ject to fixed laws, since the " same determin- 
ism governs the stone in the road and the 
brain of man." It is therefore the duty of 
the novelist to apply the methods of the ex- 
act sciences to the intellectual and emotional 
activities of mankind, and to replace the 
romances of pure imagination by those of 
observation and experiment. Idealistic writers 
have had quite too much to say about the 
unknown, about mysterious forces which 
elude analysis. A writer ought to base his 
work upon positive knowledge, upon the ter- 
ritory already conquered by science, and it is 
only when he reaches the end of this terri- 
tory, and is confronted with the unknown, 
that he is free to exercise his intuition, his 



78 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

a priori ideals. Metaphysics must give place 
to physiology. " No doubt," says M. Zola 
in closing, " the wrath of Ulysses and the 
love of Dido will remain eternally beauti- 
ful portraitures ; but it is our duty to 
analyze wrath and love, and to see precisely 
how these passions perform their function in 
the human organism. Ours is a new point 
of view ; it becomes experimental rather than 
philosophical. In a word, the experimental 
method, in literature as in science, is in pro- 
cess of determining those natural phenomena, 
individual and social, of which metaphysics 
has given hitherto only irrational and super- 
natural explanations." 

Such, in brief outline, is the 

The weakness 7 ' 

in m. zoia's argument of one of the most inter- 
argument, o 

esting and famous essays ever de- 
voted to the art of fiction. The weak points 
in Zola's presentation of his case have 
been indicated by M. Brunetiere and many 
other French critics. Passing over entirely 
Zola's assumption of a " determinism " 
governing all phenomena, — an assumption 
upon which his whole argument rests, and 
which would find even fewer adherents 
among men of science to-day than it did 



FICTION AND SCIENCE 79 

twenty years ago, — there are at least two 
fatal defects in his logic. The first is that 
in his use of the term " experiment " to de- 
scribe the novelist's procedure towards his 
characters, Zola is juggling with words. No 
novelist can possibly conduct an " experi- 
ment" with persons as a chemist does with 
acids, or a physiologist with foods. The novel- 
ist is either an " observer " pure and simple — 
as far as his nature will allow — or else he 
performs a purely imaginary " experiment " 
in placing his personages in various supposi- 
titious situations and telling us how they con- 
duct themselves. In other words, we have 
to accept the novelist's statement of the 
behavior of certain selected persons, in cir- 
cumstances imagined by the novelist himself. 
The " experiment," described with such so- 
lemnity, is a pure bit of " make-believe." 

And secondly, M. Zola, who is « A priorl 
a slashing and resourceful debater ideas -" 
rather than a shrewd one, practically gives 
away his case when he admits that in the 
presence of the a unknown " there is an op- 
portunity for one's " a priori ideas," for 
"intuition," for the play of the artist's per- 
sonality. Zola and his opponents differ of 



80 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

course as to the extent of the role which the 
unknown plays in fiction ; but to admit its 
presence at all is a serious halt in the tri- 
umphal march of his theory. What is still 
more unfortunate for him, — since literary 
theories are bound to depend, at last, upon 
literary practice, — in M. Zola's own novels 
there is a more astounding exhibition of " a 
priori ideas," of a parti pris, of deliberate 
ignoring of some facts and imaginative dis- 
tortion of other facts, than in any other 
romancer of his time. His " scientific " 
principle, when carried into practice by him- 
self, stands revealed as grossly unscientific. 
Whatever M. Zola's personal suc- 

The effects x 

of scientific cess as a debater or practitioner in 

theory. m A 

the field of fiction, there is no ques- 
tion as to the reality of the influence of the sci- 
entific temper upon the novelist's art. " True 
it is that modern scientific study is inductive, 
is experimental, is based upon comparison of 
experiences. And true it is that the modern 
scientific method has laid a heavy hand of com- 
pulsion upon the modern literary worker." * 
This compulsion has varied in degree at dif- 

1 F. H. Stoddard, The Evolution of the English Novel, 
p. 212. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1900. 



FICTION AND SCIENCE 81 

f erent periods, but it may be traced in the 
English novel ever since the seventeenth 
century. " The works of the lesser writers 
of the seventeenth century show the rise of 
a new spirit, foreign to the times of Shake- 
speare, — a spirit of observation, of attention 
to detail, of stress laid upon matter of fact, 
of bold analysis of feelings and free argu- 
ment upon institutions ; the microscope of 
the men of the Restoration, as it were, laying 
bare the details of daily objects, and super- 
seding the telescope of the Elizabethans that 
brought the heavens nearer earth. No one 
word will finally describe it. In its relation 
to knowledge it is the spirit of science; to 
literature it is the spirit of criticism ; and 
science and criticism in England are the cre- 
ations of the seventeenth century." 1 The 
same tendency is to be observed in the fic- 
tion of the Continent, where it dominated 
some of the most influential novels between 
1870 and the close of the nineteenth cen- 
tury. Although few novelists would now 
advocate it in the extreme and doctrinaire 
form assumed for argumentative purposes by 

1 Walter Ealeigh, The English Novel, p. 111. New 
York: Scribner's. 



82 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

M. Zola, it must everywhere be reckoned 
with. 

t fiction "^ * s n0 ^ ^° ^ e °t ues tioned that 
has gained fiction has gained, in more than 
one positive quality, from this 
saturation with the spirit that has* entered 
so completely into the consciousness of mod- 
ern society. 

in range oi For one thing, it has wonderfully 

interest. broadened the range of the subject- 
matter of fiction. Science has taught us 
the significance of all facts. A thousand 
aspects of life and nature, which lay wholly 
outside the field of vision of the post-classical 
or mediaeval romance, are full of interest and 
suggestiveness to the modern novel-writer. 
The moment that the writer and his reader 
share this conviction of the potential signifi- 
cance of objects or aspects of life hitherto 
regarded as trivial or meaningless, that mo- 
ment the scope of possible subjects has 
broadened almost endlessly. To compare 
the field within which a mediaeval romancer 
works professionally with the field open to 
Balzac, Zola, or Tolstoi, is to compare the 
number of objects visible to the naked eye 
with those visible to the observer possessed 
of a microscope. 



FICTION AND SCIENCE 83 

Within this vastly widened field ma^iuacy 
of possible material the individual ofdetaiL 
details have been wrought out with a scru- 
pulous and indeed microscopic care. The 
exactness of observation which has every- 
where resulted from the cultivation of the 
physical sciences has changed the very tex- 
ture of the modern novel. Dialect stories 
furnish a convenient illustration. No novelist 
would now care to put into the mouths of 
negro characters the unheard-of sounds that 
passed for negro dialect in the generation 
of " Uncle Tom's Cabin." Many writers of 
provincial dialect have given the most de- 
tailed and painstaking effort to the study of 
phonetics. Compare the rustic dialect of 
Thomas Hardy's characters, for instance, with 
that spoken by Fielding's rustics. The dif- 
ference is due to a century's progress in 
recording impressions with scientific pre- 
cision. 

Instantaneous photography has A 

r o r J A new way 

trained the eye of artist and pub- Jj^ eeing 
lie alike. To take the most famil- 
iar example, photography has taught us 
that a running horse never extends all four 
legs at once, in the way in which artists have 



84 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

been wont to represent him. As soon as 
the photograph has unerringly demonstrated 
what is the actual position of the horse's 
legs, the eye begins to analyze and readjust 
its impressions in accordance with the newly 
discovered fact. Frederic Remington's horses, 
drawn after the revelations of instantaneous 
photography, seem real to our generation ; 
the galloping horses in old pictures of British 
hunting fields seem strangely unreal. It is 
thus that science has taught us accurate and 
analytic vision, and the training has been 
instantly reflected in every form of art. 
Whether a heightened beauty has always 
resulted from this new treatment is to be 
doubted. The aesthetic questions involved 
are subtle and far-reaching. But the chief 
point now to be noted is that our generation 
has been taught to use its eyes in a new way. 
The illustrated papers, for example, show us, 
with the absolute fidelity of the camera, the 
precise image of an athlete breasting the tape 
at the end of a hundred-yard sprint. Whether 
his face and form are as beautiful as we im- 
agined, and whether the artist is justified in 
representing him as he appears to the trained 
rather than to the untrained observer, are 



FICTION AND SCIENCE 85 

questions in which we have for the present 
no concern. We have simply to note and re- 
member the fact that artists and the public 
are learning a new way of seeing things ; 
that in exactness of observation, in analytic 
power, and in the power to generalize from 
specific examples, the art of fiction has learned 
a great deal from science. 

Since fiction deals primarily with Partlcular 
man, the sciences that have par- sciences: 

7 r # physiology. 

ticularly affected the art of fiction 
are physiology and psychology. An un- 
doubted advantage has come to the novelist 
through the wider popular knowledge of the 
physical man. The conscious realization of 
the dignity and beauty of the human body, 
reflected from so many departments of mod- 
ern literature, has been nowhere more ap- 
parent than in fiction. The glorification 
of " muscular Christianity " in the novels of 
Charles Kingsley is a typical example. The 
praise of bodily strength and endurance, the 
frank pride in virility and courage, have 
scarcely been depicted more superbly by Walt 
Whitman himself than by the story-writers 
of our time. The respect for the body, the 
value set upon physical training and outdoor 



86 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

sports, rests back very largely upon what sci- 
ence has taught us regarding the importance 
of these things. " The value and significance 
of flesh/' which other poets besides Brown- 
ing and Rossetti have endeavored to make 
clear, may be portrayed mystically, after the 
manner of poets, or realistically and in a 
manner more suited to prose ; but in either 
case the science of physiology reinforces it, 
and affirms its claims to recognition. 

psychology. The P ro g ress of tne science of 
psychology has unquestionably 
taught many novelists a better understanding 
of mental processes. Recent literature is full 
of examples of the transference of psycho- 
logical theory to the pages of fiction, and 
though, as we shall notice shortly, this has 
not always resulted in a gain for fiction, it 
has given to the work of some writers a firm- 
ness and precision of analysis and phrase 
which would otherwise be impossible. One 
need not go to George Eliot and Mrs. Hum- 
phry Ward for examples. The admirable 
stories of Edith Wharton are essentially psy- 
chological both in theme and in workmanship. 
In passing from Professor William James's 
essays on psychology to Mr. Henry James's 



FICTION AND SCIENCE 87 

later studies in fiction, one is scarcely con- 
scious of a change in the writer's attitude, 
though in clearness and workmanlike Eng- 
lish the advantage frequently lies with the 
real critic of Mrs. Piper rather than with the 
creator of the imaginary Maud-Evelyn. Both 
pieces of work are studies in the psychology 
of spiritualism. The investigator has passed 
along to the fiction writer an almost endless 
list of possible material for stories, — mate- 
rial which never could have been utilized if 
it had not been for the professional labor of 
the psychologist. 

Although the influence of the 

jjr* i i li j Science as 

scientific movement has resulted harming 
in these obvious gains, both as to SSonie- 011 " 
the scope and as to the technical ^a e ££ olence 
methods of fiction, it is also pos- 
sible to point out very serious disadvantages. 
The chief of these is the confusion of the 
distinction between science and art. The 
late W. J. Stillman, an accomplished critic 
and observer, wrote two papers on " The 
Decay of Art " and " The Eevival of Art," x 
in which he argued with bitter force that the 

1 Reprinted in The Old Rome and the New and other Es- 
says. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1898. 



88 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

spirit of exact inquiry, the fidelity to nature 
and to fact, are proving fatal to true artistic 
production. " The shadow of science is the 
eclipse of art. . . . Photography is the ab- 
solute negation of art. . . . The nearer to 
nature, the farther from art." Such are 
some of the characteristic sentences in his 
brilliant attack upon that naturalistic temper 
which just now is to be met on every hand. 
Mr. Stillman believed that the glorification 
of the natural sciences leads inevitably to 
the extinction of the perception of the beau- 
tiful, that it antagonizes the development of 
aesthetic feeling on the part of the public. 
Nature should be the servant, not the master. 
The " fundamental law is that in its sphere 
art is supreme, and nature only its bricks and 
mortar. So long as we confound fidelity to 
nature with excellence in art, we ignore that 
law." Many careful students of contempo- 
rary literature will, I believe, recognize the 
validity of Mr. Stillman's criticism. The 
immemorial heresy that art consists in imi- 
tation of nature has received strong sup- 
port from a generation immensely interested 
in the facts of nature. 



FICTION AND SCIENCE 89 

But the greater the interest felt Belittlin of 
by artist and public in the facts, in l ^ e imagina- 
" the human documents," the nar- 
rower is the sphere accorded to the imagina- 
tion. If a careful study of a certain new 
field is a sufficient equipment for a novelist, 
why may not any patient observer turn out 
a masterpiece ? Mr. Henry James's excel- 
lent advice to the young author, " You can 
never take too many notes," has been under- 
stood in so literal a sense that note-taking 
seems the end of the whole matter. " I have 
seventeen hundred pages of notes," M. Zola 
is reported to have said before the appearance 
of his novel " Lourdes." " My book is fin- 
ished ; all that I have to do is to write it." 
But books made after such a fashion usually 
afford ample warning of the danger of crush- 
ing the imagination under the sheer mass and 
weight of fact. If the human imagination can- 
not freely master its material, and remould fact 
in accordance with the demands of the higher, 
the spiritual truth, then the facts may prove 
worse than useless. It is well that the bee 
should bear honey to the hive, but if it tries 
to carry too much honey, it cannot use its 
wings. 



90 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

Materialistic There are other special disad- 
tendencies. vantages which have resulted from 
the scientific depiction of physical fact. 
There has been, in much of the fiction pro- 
duced under the immediate influence of the 
scientific spirit, a materialistic tendency. We 
have already noticed the philosophy of deter- 
minism that underlies the argument of M. 
Zola's famous essay. In his novels, as M. 
Brunetiere and other critics have not failed 
to point out, there is constant evidence of 
the stress laid upon sensations rather than 
upon emotions, upon the body rather than 
upon the mind. This preoccupation with 
the concerns of the body has frequently re- 
sulted in grossness. Fiction has spread be- 
fore us detailed descriptions of the human 
organism influenced by alcoholism, by opium, 
by many nameless forms of degeneracy and 
decay, and the tendency has been too often 
not merely towards grossness, but towards 
positively evil suggestion. Upon this point 
it is sufficient to quote the words of one of 
the most learned writers on aesthetic theory, 
Bernard Bosanquet : " The three anti-aes- 
thetic tendencies of art, the scientific, the 



FICTION AND SCIENCE 91 

moralistic, and the impure, are constantly 
found in union." 1 

Turning from the depiction of A mechanical 
physical facts to the analysis of ™ cholo &- 
psychological processes, one may assert that 
the extreme impulse given, in certain schools 
of modern fiction, to the scrutiny of mental 
states has resulted in a mechanical psycho- 
logy. The men and women of these stories 
are mere puppets. The authors simply pull 
the wires, and the puppets dance as if gal- 
vanized into a ghastly semblance of life. 
The fondness for morbid states of mind has 
kept pace with the unnatural interest in mor- 
bid conditions of the body. Professor Josiah 
Eoyce wrote not many years ago an extremely 
acute study of the author of " Pilgrim's Pro- 
gress," entitled " The Case of John Bunyan." 
How many stories of Balzac or even of 
Hawthorne might be called " The Case of 

Mr. ! " The real difficulty arises in the 

temptation of the artist to assume that air 
of scientific impartiality which in reality is 
nothing other than unsympathetic. From 
being neutral, dispassionate, impartial, how 
easy to become pitiless or contemptuous ! 

1 Bosanquet, History of ^Esthetic, p. 446. 



92 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

Nor would it be difficult to point out that in 
the excessive development of the psycholo- 
gical point of view, there is a tendency toward 
over-cleverness which has robbed the art of 
fiction of its simplicity and naturalness. 
There are many pages in George Meredith 
and in Henry James acute beyond belief, 
subtle to the point of exciting our wondering 
admiration, and yet certainly oversubtle, per- 
verse, and in the end pointless and ineffec- 
tive. It is true enough that fiction, like 
poetry, may normally undertake to criticise 
life, but this criticism must not be refined to 
the point of being refined away. How often 
it fails to move either the reader's interest 
or his sympathy ! It transports us into the 
laboratory, the dissecting room, the study, 
but it fails to give us the image of palpitat- 
ing, radiant life. 

On the whole it is difficult to 

Has fiction . , 

gained or strike a general balance and say 
whether fiction has gained or lost 
by contact with science. The gains and 
losses seem to me at least to be rather evenly 
balanced. We are too close as yet to the 
body of fiction produced since 1870 to be 
aware of all its implications and indirect con- 



FICTION AND SCIENCE 93 

sequences. But there are few students of 
the history of fiction who will be inclined to 
regret that the scientific experiment has been 
so thoroughly tried. That experiment was 
sure to come. Unquestionably it has im- 
paired the power and limited the imagination 
of many a writer in our own time. But it 
has also taught some great lessons by which 
our novelists of the future may profit if they 
will. These lessons are unmistakable, and 
they go to the very root of the philosophy of 
artistic creation. In fiction, more clearly 
than in any other field of modern literature, 
may be traced the impact of the scientific 
method upon the creative imagination. And 
these lessons will remain, however wide may 
be the sway of the present reaction against 
the scientific method, however sudden the 
recoil into the field of mere adventure and 
romance. It should not be forgotten, also, 
that the developments of the last thirty 
years, the present reaction against them, and 
whatever new influences the future may have 
in store, are powerless to affect the great fic- 
tion produced in bygone generations under 
the impulse of other forces. One can always 
go back to Sir Walter if he will. 



CHAPTER V 

THE CHARACTERS 

" Nothing- that Turgenieff had to say could he more interest- 
ing than his talk ahout his own work, his manner of writing. 
What I have heard him tell of these things was worthy of the 
heautiful results he produced ; of the deep purpose, pervading 
them all, to show us life itself. The germ of a story, with him, 
was never an affair ofpTot — that was the last thing he thought 
of : it was the representation of certain persons. The first form 
in which a tale appeared to him was as the figure of an individ- 
ual, or a combination of individuals, whom he wished to see in 
action, being sure that such people must do something very 
special and interesting. They stood before him definite, vivid, 
and he wished to know, and to show, as much as possible of 
their nature. The first thing was to make clear to himself what 
he did know, to begin with ; and to this end, he wrote out a sort 
of biography of each of his characters, and everything that they 
had done and that had happened to them up to the opening of 
the story. He had their dossier, as the French say, and as the 
police has of that of every conspicuous criminal. With this ma- 
terial in his hand he was able to proceed ; the story all lay in 
the question, What shall I make them do ? He always made 
them do things that showed them completely ; but, as he said, 
the defect of his manner and the reproach that was made him 
was his want of ' architecture,' — in other words, of composition. 
The great thing, of course, is to have architecture as well as 
precious material, as Walter Scott had them, as Balzac - had 
them." Henky James, Partial Portraits. 

The novelist's With this chapter we reach a 

materials. new phage Q f the discussion. We 



THE CHARACTERS 95 

have hitherto been studying the nature of 
prose fiction, and its relation to other forms 
of literature as well as to the general scientific 
movement of the time. We have now to 
consider the materials which the novelist 
uses. The present chapter and the two fol- 
lowing ones will he devoted to the essential 
elements, the raw material, as it were, of the 
story-writer's handicraft. We must then 
trace in later chapters the modification of 
this material due to the nature of the indi- 
vidual novelist and to those literary con- 
ventions and traditions which he shares in 
common with his generation. 

We are accustomed to say of any characters, 
work of fiction that it contains JJ^Jjf 
three elements of potential interest, 
namely, the characters, the plot, and the 
setting or background. In other words, a 
story-teller shows how certain persons do 
certain things under certain circumstances, 
and according to his purpose or the nature 
of his particular book he emphasizes one 
or the other or possibly all three of these 
elements that are calculated to excite and 
satisfy the curiosity of the reader. 



96 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

Thecharac- ^et us take, then, the first of 
ters aione. these three elements and note the 
various methods in which story-writers have 
dealt with their characters. Where do they 
find them ? How do they manage to make 
the characters clear to the readers of the 
book ? These questions must be answered 
before we attempt to trace the relation of 
the characters to the plot, or the relation of 
both characters and plot to those enveloping 
circumstances and events which for conven- 
ience we have agreed to call the setting of 
the story. 

First, then, from what sources 

The novelist's . 

observation. d oes the novelist draw his charac- 
ters? Either he observes them directly in 
the actual world, or hears or reads about 
them and thus appropriates the experience 
of other persons, or, finally, he may imagine 
his characters. As far as direct observation 
of character is concerned, it is obvious that 
any man's experience with various types or 
specimens of human character is necessarily 
limited, although the difference between va- 
rious novelists in this regard must be singu- 
larly great. If one compares the variety of 
human types that fell un4er the eye of Field- 



THE CHARACTERS 97 

ing with the types with which Richardson 
was personally acquainted, the advantage 
would certainly lie on Fielding's side. Sir 
Walter Scott would certainly be at a disad- 
vantage as compared with Mr. Kipling. Yet 
these illustrations will suggest the fact that 
a wide acquaintance with the different forms 
of human nature is by no means essential to 
the highest achievement in character-draw- 
ing. Novelists like Hawthorne and Charlotte 
Bronte, with the very narrowest experience 
and personal acquaintance, have often been 
able to observe and portray personal charac- 
teristics in a fashion that puts the ordinary 
globe-trotter to shame. The commercial 
traveler's superficial acquaintance with many 
men and many cities, affording as it does 
countless opportunities for the observation of 
varied traits of human character and action, 
may not after all be so valuable an equip- 
ment for story-writing as the limited and 
sustained and profound observation of some 
country minister who has watched men and 
women from the cradle to the grave. 

But a great deal of the material ^^01 
of the novelist comes to him from knowled « e - 
what he hears in his conversation with others 



98 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

or reads in books. The latter source of in- 
formation is of course of peculiar value to 
those story-writers who have occupied them- 
selves primarily with history. Dr. Conan 
Doyle has remarked that before he wrote 
" The White Company " he read three hun- 
dred books dealing with the fourteenth cen- 
tury, and the number of volumes read by 
George Eliot in preparation for writing 
" Romola " and " Daniel Deronda " is said 
to have been far greater than this. 

M „ Yet it is clear that few novelists 

" Invention " 

ana imagina- f high rank ever transfer directly 
to their pages the material which 
has reached them at second-hand through 
conversation or through books. Nor is it so 
common as we suppose to transfer directly to 
the pages of the story the material furnished 
by the writer's own observation. In propor- 
tion as he is a genuine artist his imagination 
plays an increasing role in remoulding memo- 
ries of objects or persons. We may be sure 
that the novelist usually, if not always, desires 
something a trifle different from what he has 
actually seen or read. The basis of his char- 
acter-drawing will always rest to a certain 
extent upon self-knowledge, upon his power 



THE CHARACTERS 99 

to place himself in the imaginary person's 
situation and to determine the acts of the 
imaginary person by what the author fancies 
that he himself would do under those circum- 
stances. The limitations in the range of 
character-drawing are not all to be found, 
therefore, in the necessarily restricted spheres 
of direct observation and second-hand know- 
ledge. A man's comprehension of the possi- 
bilities of human nature is also limited by his 
knowledge of his own nature. 

With these different types of T he writer's 
character in his mind, ready to be wardsws" 
portrayed, what is the attitude of characters - 
the writer towards his characters? Some- 
times he seems to gaze upward at them in 
frank admiration of their beauty and virtue. 
Scott^s attitude towards his young lady hero- 
ines, as has been frequently pointed out, is 
one of undisguised worship. And many an- 
other romantic novelist has allowed himself 
to drop on his knees and fold his hands and 
look up at his heroines until he quite forgets 
to draw them. Conversely, there are abun- 
dant examples in French fiction — the work 
of Flaubert and Maupassant affording con- 
stant instances — of the author's looking 

L. ot x». 



100 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

down upon his characters in an attitude not 
merely of detachment but of apparent hos- 
tility. Flaubert regards the struggles of his 
most famous heroine much as a biologist 
studies the nerve reactions of some insect 
pinned to his table for the purpose's of ex- 
periment. 

Friendly in- There is, however, a happier 
terpretation. mean between these two extremes ; 
namely, when the author seems to stand on 
a level with his characters, looking them 
frankly in the eyes, reading each weakness 
clear, but studying them as it were with the 
level gaze of friendship. Every novelist has 
his favorite characters ; that is, personages 
whom he draws with exceptional sympathy 
and fullness of detail, into whose mouths he 
may put his own sentiments, whose hearts 
seem to throb in unison with his own. Very 
often the novelist betrays in this way his un- 
conscious sympathies. M. Brunetiere many 
years ago, in a brilliant essay entitled " Le 
personnage sympatique dans la Litterature," * 
claimed that Shakespeare's Falstaff and Ham- 
let were examples of this kind of uncon- 
scious revelation of the more profound and 
1 Revue des deux Mondes, Oct. 15, 1882. 



THE CHARACTERS 101 

instinctive traits of the writer himself. It 
is likewise easy to believe, to take an even 
more familiar example, that Milton was un- 
aware of the fact that he was making Satan 
the hero of " Paradise Lost." 

Moral sympathy is necessary if Moralsym . 
the work in question is to exhibit pathy ' 
any moral perspective. The artist's delinea- 
tion should, of course, be impartial, and it 
is better, in the great majority of cases cer- 
tainly, that his sympathy should be im- 
plicitly rather than explicitly expressed. But 
the sympathy should be there. The writer 
of great fiction not only recognizes the 
difference between good and evil, but he 
does not allow himself to speak of good and 
evil in the same tones. To quote Tolstoi on 
Maupassant, — 

" I remember a celebrated painter once showing me 
a picture of his which represented a religious proces- 
sion. It was wonderfully painted, but there was no 
indication of the artist's relation to his subject. 

" ' Well, now, do you consider these ceremonies to be 
good, and that one ought to take part in them or no ? ' 
I inquired. 

" The artist, with a show of condescension to my sim- 
plicity, explained that he knew nothing about that, 
and thought he had no need to know. His business 
was to depict life. 



102 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

" ' But, any way, you sympathize with all this ? ' 

" 1 1 cannot say so.' 

" ' Well, do you dislike these ceremonies ? ' 

" ' Neither the one or the other,' replied this modern, 
highly educated artist, with a smile of compassion at 
my stupidity. He represented life, wit^out_under- 
standin^jLts_^eaning, and unmoved by Jjts_aspect to 
love_ or dislike. So it was, one~regrets to say, with 



With this material for character- 
Methods Of . I'll 

delineating drawing ready to his hand, and 

character: 

direct por- with these conscious and uncon- 
scious sympathies and antipathies 
to guide him in his work, how are his char- 
acters to be delineated ? It is usual in com- 
menting upon the task of the play-wright 
to make a distinction between direct and in- 
direct methods of character portrayal. The 
same distinction holds good in fiction. The 
novelist must often content himself with ex- 
hibiting without comment, except so far as 
the requisite physical description is con- 
cerned, the personal appearance of his char- 
acters. He narrates their actions, reports 
their words, or by one of the immemorial 
conventions of the story-teller's craft, he 
tells us what is lurking in their thoughts. 



THE CHARACTERS 103 

But this direct delineation is by The auUl or's 
no means so frequent as that kind comment - 
of character-drawing which is accompanied 
with some sort of comment designed to 
interpret and enforce some of the features 
of the story. Sometimes the author himself, 
as so frequently in the novels of Thackeray 
and GeorgeJEUat, takes the stage and ex- 
plains or moralizes upon the behavior of his 
personages. Very often there are characters 
or groups of characters performing some- 
thing of the function of the ancient Greek 
chorus in interpreting to the reader the bear- 
ing, the moral results, of the act which is tak- 
ing place. It frequently happens that this 
character is the " sympathetic personage " 
whom M. Brunetiere has described ; that is, 
the character in deepest accord with the fun- 
damental nature of the author himself. But 
it by no means happens that this interpreting 
personage is invariably the leading character 
of the story. More often it is one of the 
minor characters who from time to time by 
indirect comment reveals to the reader the 
essential nature of all that is happening. 

What is called in the case of the ma^t 
play-wright indirect delineation of deUneati011 - 



104 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

character has also its correspondence in fic- 
tion. " I am no longer beautiful/' said a 
famous French woman ; " the sweepers no 
longer turn to look when I cross the street ! " 
Something of the same effect is secured in 
the chapters of a story as upon the stage, by 
describing not the hero and the heroine, but 
the effect produced by them upon the other 
personages. Some of the most masterly 
touches in the closing chapters of " Vanity 
Fair " are devoted to the portrayal of the 
social and moral position of Rebecca Sharp, 
but Thackeray does not venture to do this 
directly. He simply shows how she is treated 
by the inhabitants of the little town of Pum- 
pernickel. In the stage version of " Vanity 
Fair " these scenes are brought sharply home 
to the consciousness of many spectators who 
probably missed the point of Thackeray's 
delicate insinuations in the text of the story. 
The more subtle, the more psychological the 
particular work of fiction happens to be, the 
greater become the possibilities of this indi- 
rect method of character-delineation. Haw- 
thorne's most effective descriptions of Judge 
Pyncheon in " The House of the Seven 
Gables " are not the passages where he de- 



THE CHARACTERS 105 

scribes the judge directly , extraordinarily 
vivid as these are ; they are rather in those 
paragraphs where the effects produced by 
Judge Pyncheon's personality upon the trans- 
parent nature of Phoebe are made clear to the 
reader. 

The illustration just Used SUg- characters as 

gests a new distinction which we deUneated - 
must draw; namely, the difference between 
the characters as delineated. Let us imagine 
that the personages of the story, whether 
drawn directly or indirectly, whether pre- 
sented with or without comment, now stand 
before us. Let us suppose ourselves to look 
at them as quietly and completely as we 
should observe actors upon the stage. What 
is the most obvious difference between these 
people whom the novelist has drawn for us ? 

One obvious distinction is that simple and 
between simple and complex char- complex - 
acters. Phoebe, in " The House of the Seven 
Gables," is a deliciously simple character, a 
nature of such flawless purity that it seems 
possible to comprehend her at a glance. She 
belongs to Goethe's Gretchen type, the sort 
of girl he loved, in his plays, to place in 
dramatic contrast with accomplished women 



106 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

of the world. Sir Walter Scott's fighting 
men are similar examples of perfectly simple 
characters. One understands them at a 
glance, and however much one loves or hates 
them upon deeper acquaintance, they never 
confuse or delude the reader. A single 
fibre makes up the texture of their natures. • 
Dominant But f ar more commonly the per- 

traits. sonages in the novel are complex. 

Very often they have one trait which pre- 
dominates over their others, — as selfishness 
is the dominant motive in Becky Sharp, and 
love for her husband the dominant motive of 
Fielding's Amelia. Sometimes it is difficult 
to say of these complex characters what the 
strongest element in their natures will prove 
to be. In " The Marble Faun " much of the 
fascination of Miriam's character, especially 
when thrown into contrast with Hilda's, turns 
upon the extremely complex traits out of which 
the character is woven. The same is true of 
Gwendolen in " Daniel Deronda," as com- 
pared with Dinah Morris in " Adam Bede." 
stationary Another distinction which plays 

tog cha?ac-" a constantly increasing role in mod- 
ters \ ern fiction is that between the sta- 

tionary and the developing characters. Cer- 



THE CHARACTERS 107 

tain personages, and these not the least in- 
teresting and congenial to the reader, remain, 
like Horatio in the play, constant quantities 
to the last. The vicissitudes of the action 
do not affect them. One is conscious that 
whatever happens they will remain to the 
end precisely what they were in the begin- 
ning, harmonious, evenly balanced characters, 
from whose natures the waves of worldly cir- 
cumstance and trial are thrown back spent 
and baffled. In the novel of adventure, and 
particularly in those of the picaresque type, 
there is little attempt at any portrayal of char- 
acter development. The pawn, the bishop, 
the knight, remain to the end of the game 
the same as in the beginning. Mere pieces 
on a chess board, they do not change their 
nature with the progress of the story. It is 
generally true of the minor characters in the 
fiction of the present day that the closing 
chapters reveal them exactly as they were in 
the beginning. They are like trees upon the 
bank of a river, by means, of which one may 
measure the swiftness of the stream itself. 
But the main characters of the story may be 
likened without exaggeration to the river 
itself, constantly altering its course, accelerat- 



108 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

ing or retarding its current, and never quite 
the same from one moment to another. This 
develo pment of_personality in the characters 
of the novelist is one of the most subtle and 
powerful modes of affecting the sympathy 
and interest of the reader. Let us note 
some of the ways in which this development 
is accomplished. 

In fiction, as in life, growth is 

Struggle: con- __ _ 7 _ ' & . 

scions and usually the result oi struggle. rJut 

unconscious. , . - . 

the struggle may be conscious or 
unconscious, and may end in victory or in 
defeat. There is something very fine about 
the wholly unconscious fashion in which 
Scott's characters perform their role in the 
human comedy. There is little self-examina- 
tion, no morbid analysis of motives. Most 
of his finest personages are of the true 
Horatio breed. They behave as if the par- 
ticular things they do were the only things 
possible for them to do and they were not 
to trouble themselves about either the acts 
or their consequences. The same is true of 
many 'of the most attractive personages of 
Dickens, Kingsley, and George Meredith. 
ta?in g victo£ Sepjcge. JEHot'j novels, on the 
or defeat. other hand, are full of examples of 



THE CHARACTERS 109 

conscious moral struggle. The men and 
women whom she depicts most fully are 
constantly analyzing their motives or strug- 
gling forward towards some goal. In the 
cases of Adam Bede and Daniel Deronda the 
conscious moral efforts are successful. These 
characters accomplish the aim which they 
have established for themselves. The same 
may be said for Henry Esmond, and for 
Lord Kew in " The j fesEcomfig." Few of 
Thackeray^s characters torture themselves in 
self-analysis, in conscious moral questioning, 
and yet the struggles of Esmond and of Lord 
Kew are no less real on that account and no 
less representative of human nature. 
Some of the most famous ex- 

, „ , , Deterioration. 

amples ot character- drawing m 
modern fiction represent, however, not moral 
victory but defeat. To watch a character 
deteriorate, no matter how strongly it battles 
against adversity of circumstance or inherent 
weakness of nature, imparts to fiction the 
tragedy of actual life. Lydgate in " Middle- 
march " is a familiar example of this deterio- 
ration ; so is Anna Karenina in Tolstoi's 
novel, and Tess of the D'Urbervilles in the 
novel by Thomas Hardy. Both Thackeray 



110 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

and George Eliot have given us masterly 
examples of character gradually deteriorat- 
ing without any real effort to lift itself above 
the stream of circumstance. Tito Melema in 
" Komola " and Lord Mohun in " Henry 
Esmond/' like Bartley Hubbard in Mr. 
Howells's " Modern Instance/' steadily drift 
from bad to worse, and their downward pro- 
gress is indicated with a precision, a truth, 
and a moral observation which make a pro- 
found impression upon the reader. 

Very often, however, the char- 

Development ..»«*■ J j. 

under special acters oi fiction are portrayed to us 

influences. , , , , 

as developing not so much under 
the stress of conflict, but under the influence 
of such forces^ as prosperity, as in " John 
Halifax, Gentleman," or adversity, as in 
" Silas Lapham " and " Silas Marner." Or 
we watch the character alter as it approaches 
old age, as with Colonel Newcome, or submit 
to the force of a stronger personality, as in 
" Kichard Feverel." We see it acting under 
the influence of religious impulse, as with 
Dinah Morris and David Grieve. We are 
asked to study the effect upon it of some 
theory of art or philosophy, as in Pater's 
" Imaginary Portraits " and Voltaire's " Can- 



THE CHARACTERS 111 

dide." In all these ways it will be observed 
that the author of fiction has endeavored to 
hold the mirror up to nature, to make his 
book reflect something of the actuality of 
moral experience which is the condition of 
the growth or the retrogression in the lives 
of real men or women. 

However real the fictitious per- character- 
sonality may seem to the writer, he IsUc traits " 
must depend upon certain artistic devices for 
making the characteristic traits of his person- 
age seem real to the reader. It was the cus- 
tom of Scottjbo devote a page or two of 
personal description to each character at the 
time of its first introduction into the story. 
After this preliminary description of the per- 
sonal appearance and costume of the charac- 
ter, Scott seemed to trouble his head no more 
about the matter. The personage was sup- 
posed to be portrayed once for all, and to be 
visualized by the reader in the terms of that 
presentation. It is more common, however, 
to find these characterizing details, whether 
of outward appearance or of inner nature,, 
presented gradually to the reader. Some^ 
times the characteristic trait in fiction corre- 
sponds closely to the " gag " upon the stage, 



/ 



112 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

that is, a trick of speech or action obviously 
used to identify the character. We grow 
familiar in "JRomola" with Tessa's "baby 
face." Mr. Brooke in " Middlemarch " is 
forever saying, " I went into that a good 
deal at one time." In " David Copperfield " 
Barkis is always " willin'." These repeated 
idiosyncrasies of talk, or face, or dress, or 
manner undoubtedly help to accentuate the 
individuality of the character, but if too ex- 
clusive reliance is placed upon them it is easy 
to turn them, whether in a book or upon the 
stage, into caricatures. 

Professional It * s extremely interesting to 
traits. notice the delicate and sure touches 

with which masters of imaginative fiction 
have portrayed the characteristics of the va- 
rious professions and occupations. In the 
Prologue to the " Canterbury Tales," for 
instance, one never wearies of admiring the 
simplicity of the soldier, the awkwardness of 
the sailor on horseback, the lawyer who seemed 
busier than he was, the doctor who had studied 
but little of the Bible, the merchant whose 
talk was of money-making, 
class traits Class characteristics are also in- 

teresting to observe. In an Eng- 



THE CHARACTERS 113 

lish or Continental novel one is constantly 
called upon to take account of certain recog- 
nized class distinctions, upon which many of 
the relations of the characters are instantly 
seen to turn. " A bourgeois interior " has a 
distinct connotation in a French or German 
novel ; but to describe a similar American 
interior the word bourgeois would not suffice. 
The cash basis of classification of American 
society, — so far as it prevails, — while it 
frequently piques or rewards the professional 
interest of the literary artist, requires far 
more labor on his part than if he were to 
describe the upper, the middle, or the lower 
classes, removed from one another by the 
almost impassable barrier fixed by centuries 
of social tradition. 

It is also interesting* to note that „ 

fc> Representa- 

individuals in fiction frequently uvesof 

y- J certain roles. 

take on certain typical traits due 
to the particular role which the individual is 
to play in the story. The debutante, the 
dowager, the " woman thirty years old," the 
" woman misunderstood," have a distinct 
function in certain stories, and this function 
affects more or less directly the behavior of 
the individuals who have been cast for that 



114 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

particular role. The same is true of the 
persons who represent moral failures and 
triumphs. The drunkard, the gambler, the 
miser, the philanthropist, have, as types, cer- 
tain easily recognized traits, and these typi- 
cal characteristics are not to be left out of 
account in studying the character-drawing 
of the persons to whom these traits belong. 
The same is true of those personages to whom 
are assigned definite roles in the plot of the 
story. The villain, the lover, the intriguer, 
the heroine, are parts suggesting definite 
lines of character-drawing, and it is impos- 
sible to construct an individual character in 
fiction without regard to the conventional 
requirements of the role which the person is 
asked to play. 

Furthermore, there are typical 

National and . 7 . i 

sectional national traits which are always to 

traits. . . . 

be noted in addition to those fines 
of difference which we have just discussed. 
The Italian, the Frenchman, the Englishman, 
when introduced into a novel, must show to 
a greater or less extent the typical behavior 
of the Italian, the Frenchman, or the Eng- 
lishman. In depicting national characteris- 
tics, sectional traits, too, play an important 



THE CHARACTERS 115 

part. In introducing an American into a 
story few novelists are willing to satisfy 
themselves by representing such a "typical 
American" as is presented upon the Paris 
or London stage. The novelist with a fine 
sense of precision in character-drawing would 
certainly wish to note those characteristics 
that distinguish the Southerner from the 
Northerner, the Hoosier from the Calif ornian 
or the Texan. Even within the boundaries 
of a single section, as the history of New 
England fiction so abundantly illustrates, 
there is an immense variety of different 
types. 

It becomes essential, therefore, 

7 . 7 The indtvld- 

that we should distinguish closely uaiandthe 

. type. 

between the individual and the 
type. What is really meant by these two 
words ? And which should the artist aim to 
delineate ? We say in actual life that men 
like Samuel Johnson or Abraham Lincoln pos- 
sess individuality, — that is, that they have 
certain sharply defined personal characteris- 
tics which readily and absolutely separate 
them from all other individuals in the world. 
In fiction, persons like Becky Sharp and 
Colonel Newcome have precisely this same 



116 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

individual characterization, and cannot for 
a moment be confused with other persons 
in other stories. As compared with these 
examples of individuals what do we mean 
by a type? The dictionaries suggest two 
lines of definition, both of which are of use 
to the student of fiction. According to the 
first, type means an ideal representation of 
a species or group, combining its essential 
characteristics. It is this sense of the word 
which dictionary makers have in mind in 
describing the type as the ideal hovering 
before the artist. But in the terms of an- 
other definition, type also means an example 
of a species or group combining its essential 
characteristics. When, therefore, we speak 
of types in fiction we sometimes mean that 
a person is portrayed as embodying more or 
less perfectly certain ideals which exist in the 
mind of the artist, and we also mean very 
frequently that the typical person is simply 
an excellent example of a well known species 
or group. 

We shall find a convenient il- 



The type In 

natural 

history. 



lustration in natural history. I 



remember hearings a famous natu- 
ralist say that the crow is a typical bird, — 



THE CHARACTERS 117 

that is, that, compared with the woodpecker, 
the hawk, the crane, the crow represents the 
normal form of the bird family. Naturalists 
speak, indeed, of the type genus, the type 
species, and the type specimen, meaning 
thereby a division that is especially charac- 
teristic of the larger group which it repre- 
sents. And our distinction in fiction between 
the individual and the type would perhaps 
be more fully illustrated by the use of the 
terms u genus," " species," and " specimen." 
Genus, let us say, eorvus ; species, corvus 
Americanus ; and specimen, some particular 
crow under observation, — for example, old 
" Silver-Spot," so agreeably described by 
Mr. Seton-Thompson. This distinction is a 
perfectly simple one. When we say that the 
fox terrier is intelligent, we mean that the 
type is intelligent. When I say that my fox 
terrier is intelligent, I have the individual in 
mind. 

Let us see how all this bears on 

, , , This dlstlnc- 

the question 01 character-drawing tion applied 
in fiction. We will suppose that 
the novelist wishes to introduce into his 
story the figure of Abraham Lincoln. It is 
obvious that he must represent Lincoln as 



118 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

belonging to the family of man, the genus 
American, the species Westerner, but that 
all these generic and typical traits must be 
further differentiated by delineating the qual- 
ities which distinguish the individual speci- 
men, Abraham Lincoln, from other Western 
American men. 

confusion of But nothing is more frequent in 
{XKwE 11 fiction than to find these two 
uaL things confused. How does it hap- 

pen ? First, through an attempt to describe 
the individual by typical traits merely. If I 
say that a tramp came to my back door this 
morning and asked for some breakfast, and 
that he had torn shoes, old clothes, a slouch- 
ing gait, the face of a drinker, I do not iden- 
tify him in the slightest. If I were to put 
the police on his trail, armed with such a 
description, it would fit fifty other tramps as 
well as the one I have in mind. It is obvious 
that to identify this particular individual I 
must be able to describe some peculiarity of 
person or costume which differentiates him 
from others of his class, or at least to de- 
scribe such a combination of qualities and 
details as is not likely to be found in the 
case of any other tramp. 



THE CHARACTERS 119 

Secondly, the type and the indi- Moral 
vidual are often confused in char- al,stractions - 
acter-drawing because the writer substitutes 
for the individual some moral abstraction. 
In the old moralities and miracle plays such 
characters as Good Fame, Virtuous Living, 
Tom Tosspot, Cuthbert Cutpurse, are nothing 
but signs of certain moral qualities, to be 
praised or reprehended according to the 
pleasure of the play-wright. Even the Eliza- 
bethan drama, in all its wealth of individual 
portraiture, is constantly presenting to us 
personages who are mere personifications of 
moral qualities, and Bunyan's masterly power 
of characterization does not prevent some 
readers from considering Mr. Worldly Wise- 
man and Mr. Faintheart to be moral im- 
ages rather than men. 

Thirdly, the type is frequently 

. . . . Caricatures. 

confused with the individual be- 
cause the artist gives a caricature rather than 
a portrait. In pictorial caricature, as we 
know, certain features are exaggerated until 
the individual is far removed from reality. 
Tweed and Croker, if we are to believe the 
caricaturists, are not real persons. They are 
simply embodiments of certain abstract and 



120 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

highly reprehensible moral qualities. It is 
easy to point out, in some of the very great- 
est fiction, examples of the fatal ease with 
which the writer can turn a portrait into a 
caricature. Sir Pitt Crawley's stinginess ap- 
parently tickled Thackeray's fancy so thor- 
oughly that he could not resist the temptation 
to exaggerate it until it was so much out of 
drawing that it robbed the character of its 
actuality. As compared with Sir Pitt Craw- 
ley, Becky Sharp's portrait shows constant 
restraint and a steady sense of proportion. 
Those personages of Dickens whom we are 
wont to speak of as " Dickensy " characters 
are all too frequently caricatures rather than 
portraits. Certain traits are so magnified 
for purposes of identification or humor that 
we see not the real person but only the 
" g a g>" the trick, the turn of farce, which 
presents him to the audience. Children de- 
light in this sort of thing, of course, but 
many older persons wonder, when they come 
to Dickens again, how all this false drawing 
could ever have given them pleasure. 
The causes It is more interesting, however, 

lackouiear 1 to inquire into the causes of this 
vision - confusion. Why is it that the 



THE CHARACTERS 121 

artist allows himself to substitute typical for 
individual traits and hence to lose the power 
of imparting a sense of actuality to his ficti- 
tious personages ? It is often true, no doubt, 
that the author fails to see clearly what he 
wants to express. He falls into abstract, 
typical delineation through mere irresolution 
or inattention, or it may be the overf ondness 
for what he may like to call the " ideal," that 
is, for the abstract rather than for the con- 
crete. To this latter predilection must be 
attributed the feebleness of a great deal of 
Romantic art. It accounts for the weakness 
of Scott's character-drawing of ladies in com- 
parison with his masterly delineation of peas- 
ant girls. 

Then, too, the prevalence of a 

. . . Prevalence of 

tashionable artistic type is otten fashionable 
found to overpower the artist's 
originality. The " Gibson girl," who is said 
to be due originally to the influence of a 
certain model in Mr. Gibson's early career as 
an artist, has continued not only to dominate 
most of Mr. Gibson's own drawings of women, 
but has been nothing less than an obsession, 
though a charming one, upon a whole school 
of American draughtsmen. In similar fash- 



122 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

ion, there was a sort of Richard Harding 
Davis heroine who used to make her period- 
ical appearance in college stories. Indeed, 
college stories furnish an excellent example 
of the prevalence of a certain fashionable 
type and the consequent neglect of individ- 
ual portraiture. In all the college stories 
which have appeared in the last dozen years 
how few sharply characterized individuals are 
to be found ! It is far easier to describe the 
category under which a particular student 
belongs and to give the general traits of the 
" football man/' the " sport/' the " grind," 
than it is to portray the particular person who 
belongs to the category. In other words, 
most authors of college stories content them- 
selves, as far as character-depiction is con- 
cerned, by describing the pigeon-hole rather 
than the man in the pigeon-hole. 
Failure in I 11 the third place, although the 

expression. fi c ti n-writer may see the individ- 
ual with perfect distinctness, either as actually 
present before him or in imaginative vision, 
he may nevertheless not be able to express 
what he sees. He draws the general charac- 
teristics of the type rather than the individual 
characteristics of the person because his vocab- 



THE CHARACTERS 123 

ulary is not sufficiently delicate and precise 
for the task of portrayal. Here, again, col- 
lege stories afford a useful illustration. It 
is not to be supposed that the authors of 
those stories see their fellows less distinctly, 
nor that they perceive imaginative types with 
less clearness of outline, simply because they 
are dealing with young men and young wo- 
men. The defect is chiefly to be attributed 
to the lack of training in flexible and precise 
expression. 

But for one or another of these 

i'ii i i • n Few lndlvid- 

three causes which have been briefly uai cnarac- 

jV , , „ • t -i i i ters created. 

outlined, now tew individual char- 
acters have been created in fiction in the 
last ten years ! We have had certain types 
drawn over and over again with wearisome 
reiteration, but we have had few fictitious 
personages who have given us the impression 
of actuality. It must be remembered after 
all that the type is, in the last analysis, only 
a subjective abstraction, either in the reader's 
mind or in the mind of the artist. The mas- 
ters of fiction, surely, have generally con- 
tented themselves with creating personages 
and letting the type take care of itself. If 
the personage be so drawn as to convey a 



124 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

vivid sense of reality, his individual character- 
istics will be firmly outlined ; and if he gives 
to the reader an impression of moral unity, 
there is little doubt that he will in the true 
sense contain the type. For the type, so far 
as it is of any artistic value, is implicit in the 
individual. 

character- Before bringing to a close the 

contrast. consideration of the delineation of 
character, we should note that some of the 
greatest triumphs in the portrayal of character 
have been due to an effective sense of charac- 
ter-contrast. The differences between mem- 
bers of the same family — as for instance 
between Adam and Seth Bede, Kachel and 
Beatrix Esmond, George and Henry War- 
rington — have been utilized with consum- 
mate effect. The same is true of those pairs 
or trios of friends of which the history of 
the drama and of the novel offers so many 
brilliant examples. Hamlet and Horatio, 
Athos, Porthos and Aramis, Mulvaney, Or- 
theris and Learoyd, gain immensely in sa- 
liency and picturesqueness of outline because 
they are thrown into dramatic contrast with 
those friends in whose presence we are wont 
to watch them. 



THE CHARACTERS 125 

Character - grouping on a still character- 
wider scale results from those mani- grouping - 
fold social, economical, and political rela- 
tions which place differently constituted indi- 
viduals in clearly marked lines of relation- 
ship. Master and servant, mistress and maid, 
lover and confidant, debtor and creditor, 
the dwellers on the farm or in the village, 
the representatives of a profession, the ad- 
venturers in some commercial or political 
enterprise, are linked together by bonds 
which give an opportunity for striking 
groups of characters. Indeed, in every 
story, as in every play, there is commonly 
some unifying principle, like a love affair, a 
crime, a journey, a business scheme, which 
instantly throws all the persons of the story 
into some sort of relationship with one an- 
other. Their attitude towards certain facts 
instantly ranks them, as by a kind of irre- 
sistible physical or moral gravitation. They 
are thrown into main groups or subordinate 
groups according to the part they play in 
the main plot or in the sub-plot of the tale. 
They work out their individual destiny in 
harmony or in contrast with the general 
destiny that presides over the fate of the 



126 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

personages in the narrative ; they advance 
or retreat, compromise, surrender, or triumph 
as the judgment and the insight of the 
writer shall dictate. But in all the manifold 
and subtle relations into which the persons in 
the story are thrown, there is an opportunity 
for the most searching, the most spirited, 
the most brilliant methods of character-de- 
lineation. If, as Goethe said, a character is 
formed in the stream of the world, the char- 
acters in a novel form themselves into more 
and more plastic outlines as the stream of 
the story sweeps to its close. 

It is, therefore, quite impossible 

Harmony of ? . i • 

character and to conceive of characters m a novel 

action. . . , . 

without taking into consideration 
the actions in which those characters are 
involved. The two elements, character and 
action, should be harmoniously treated. 
There will always be in fiction, doubtless, 
examples of " plot-ridden " characters ; that 
is, persons whose role in the story makes 
them do something which they would not 
naturally do. A high-minded girl is made 
to listen at the door simply because it is de- 
sirable that she should be aware of a conver- 
sation taking place between her father and 



THE CHARACTERS 127 

her lover. An honest man is made to com- 
mit a crime because a crime is essential to 
the particular web of circumstances which 
the author desires to weave. But these 
instances of the violation of truth in charac- 
ter are usually punished by the sense of dis- 
belief which the reader is quick to feel. It 
is natural that we should demand in fiction, 
as in life, that the character should be true 
to itself, that under the given circumstances 
it should exhibit consistent behavior. 

What is more, we instinctively 
demand in the characters that im- 
press us by their individuality that moral 
unity by virtue of which each character 
shows evidence of what has happened to it in 
the past. Just as each one of us is conscious 
of his past, and is also conscious of the 
possibilities of the future, and bears this 
consciousness, although perhaps without real- 
izing it, into every act of the present, so we 
desire that the men and women described for 
us in the pages of the novelist should give 
this sense of the continuity, the unbroken 
web of life. To enter a railroad station — 
say at Buffalo — and see an east-bound ex- 
press standing on the track, resplendent in 



128 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

paint and gilt, and ready to pull out of the 
station, is to receive an impression of actu- 
ality and power. But one has a far higher 
sense of power if one watches at the station 
this same train coming in from the West, an 
hour late, with vestibule and roof and win- 
dows covered with snow and ice, in evidence 
of the storm through which the train has 
passed. We picture to ourselves the winter 
landscape over which it has been flying in 
its struggle against time. We know that 
before it reaches Albany or New York that 
lost hour must be made up, if engine and 
engineer can do it. The past and the fu- 
ture of the train unite in their impression on 
our consciousness, and impart a thrilling 
sensation of personal force. In the same 
way, our vision of men and women in the 
greatest books of fiction is not confined to 
the immediate moment when they are pre- 
sent to our view ; we are more or less dimly 
conscious of the past and of the future of 
those characters and of all the moral po- 
tentialities of their lives. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE PLOT 

" Let him [the fiction-writer] choose a motive, whether of 
character or of passion ; carefully construct his plot so that every 
incident is an illustration of the motive, and every property em- 
ployed shall hear to it a near relation of congruity or contrast ; 
avoid a sub-plot, unless, as sometimes in Shakespeare, the sub- 
plot be a reversion or complement of the main intrigue ; . . . and 
allow neither himself in the narrative nor any character in the 
course of the dialogue, to utter one sentence that is not part and 
parcel of the business of the story. . . . And as the root of the 
whole matter, let him bear in mind that his novel is not a tran- 
script of life, to be judged by its exactitude ; but a simplifica- 
tion of some side or point of life, to stand or fall by its signifi- 
cant simplicity." E. L. Stevenson, A Humble Remonstrance. 

In discussing the affiliations of W h a tpi t 
the novel with the play, in the me{ms - 
third chapter of this book, I have had occa- 
sion to say something about the plot and its 
relation to the theme and to the characters 
of the play or the novel. The word means, 
as its etymology implies, a weaving together. 
Or, still more simply, we understand by plot 
that which happens to the characters, — the 
various ways in which the forces represented 



130 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

by the different personages of the story are 
made to harmonize or clash through external 
action. 

sources of I n determining the nature and 

plot * the details of the action of a story, 

it is obvious that the novelist may draw on 
the same sources of knowledge which he 
uses in the construction of the characters. 
The plot may be suggested to him by his 
own observation, by memories of what he 
has heard or read, or through the pure gift 
of inventiveness. One can scarcely say that 
there is marked superiority in any one of 
these methods. Many novelists, like Haw- 
thorne, have been inclined to confess rue- 
fully : " I have seen so little of the real 
world, that I have nothing but thin air to 
concoct my stories out of." On the other 
hand, the experience of writers like Dickens, 
Thackeray, or Mr. Kipling has crowded their 
memory with incidents and events admirably 
adapted to furnish the raw material of count- 
less plots. Sometimes, no doubt, it is dif- 
ficult to readjust such matter and make it 
sufficiently plastic to give free play to the 
imagination. The stories that come to one 
by inheritance through half forgotten memo- 



THE PLOT 131 

ries of country-side legends and traditions, nar- 
ratives which one dimly remembers from old 
books or scraps of history and ballads, have 
often proved more stimulating to the con- 
structive imagination than any hints given 
by actual experience. Just as Liszt wrote 
his rhapsodies by utilizing hints and frag- 
ments of folk-lore and popular melodies, so 
Thomas Hardy finds it easy in his " Wessex 
Tales " to utilize the histories of decaying 
families, stories of adventure of long ago, 
strange tales that have been whispered by the 
hearth-fire from immemorial times. " Truth 
is stranger than fiction," and truth often 
needs to be recast by a fictive imagination 
before it is quite ready for the fiction- writer's 
hand. 

But this matter of plot gives lit- o«en a mat- 
tie diniculty to those born story- twofinstinct - 
tellers who have the gift for conceiving char- 
acters in action. For these natural spinners 
of the yarn, to whom invention is the most 
easy, the most fascinating, the most capti- 
vating of gifts, — for a Stevenson, a Scott, 
a Dumas, — to block out the plot of a story 
is a mere bagatelle. In Scott's own words, 
he " took the easiest path across country," 



132 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

following merely his whim or his natural in- 
stinct : and one is bound to record the fact 
that the novels written or planned by these 
reckless, inveterate story-tellers afford quite 
as much satisfaction to technical students of 
plot-construction as do the more elaborate 
plans and devices of those writers whose in- 
terest lies foremost in the creation of charac- 
ter, and with whom the element of action is 
of secondary concern. 

piot in its Plot m ^s simplest form may 

simplest form. concern itself with nothing more 

than the progress of a single character and 
its development and experiences at the dif- 
ferent stages of its career. Take, for in- 
stance, that admirable story by Hawthorne, 
" Wakefield," which concerns itself with the 
psychological analysis of the character of 
an excellent gentleman to whom it occurred 
one day that it would be a good plan not to 
go home that night, and who consequently 
sought lodgings in another street and stayed 
away from home for twenty years. Haw- 
thorne makes real to us the whimsical, yet 
singularly human and consistent motive that 
actuated this strange character in his aston- 
ishing performance ; and although the story 



THE PLOT 133 

involves but a single personage, it would be 
difficult to point to any short story of equal 
length in which the reader feels greater in- 
terest. 

Usually, however, the plot of 

/ , : r Dealing with 

a story involves at least two char- twocnarac- 

ters. 

acters. They embody different 
forces, different ways of facing and fight- 
ing the world of circumstance with which 
they are brought into collision. In " Silas 
Marner," for instance, the human problem 
involved is the influence of the love of a child 
on the lonely and embittered nature of a her- 
mit. The action of the story is designed to 
bring these two forces together and to note 
the nature of their mutual reactions. The 
plot of Hawthorne's " Rappaccini's Daugh- 
ter " involves the struggle between scientific 
curiosity and paternal love. These forces 
are embodied in the persons of the scientist 
and his daughter, and the plot is inevitably 
worked out by the natural laws of human 
character, " the truth of the human heart," 
under the peculiar circumstances which the 
author chooses to describe. And, to choose 
another short story of a different type, there 
is Mr. Kipling's " His Private Honour." In 



134 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

this story a young British lieutenant, in a 
moment of extreme irritation, strikes a private 
soldier. The act is one that calls for dis- 
missal from the Queen's service. What is 
the officer to do ? He cannot send money to 
the soldier — who happens to be the redoubt- 
able Ortheris himself — nor can he apologize 
to him in private. Neither can he let mat- 
ters drift. Ortheris, too, has his own code 
of pride and honor ; he too is " a servant of 
the Queen ; " but how is the insult to be 
atoned for ? The way out of this apparently 
hopeless muddle is a beautifully simple one, 
after all. The lieutenant invites Ortheris to 
go shooting with him, and when they are 
alone, asks him to "take off his coat." 
" Thank you, sir ! " says Ortheris. The two 
men fight until Ortheris owns that he is 
beaten. Then the lieutenant apologizes for 
the original blow, and officer and private 
walk back to camp devoted friends. That 
fight is the moral salvation of Lieutenant 
Ouless. The plot of "His Private Honour" 
is, therefore, the narrative of the struggle 
between two kinds of pride, the pride of the 
officer and that of the enlisted man, and the 
solution comes through Mr. Kipling's power 



THE PLOT 135 

to make us realize the English love of fair 
play, the fundamental human equality which 
is common to both men despite the difference 
of their rank. 

It is far easier, however, to throw Three 
the lines of a plot into swift com- cliaracters - 
plication when there are at least three char- 
acters involved. The attitude of two of 
these characters towards the third may in- 
stantly be utilized to establish and carry for- 
ward new lines of action. In " The Knight's 
Tale " of Chaucer the two young men im- 
prisoned in the tower catch their first glimpse 
of Emily, and this moment marks the first 
entanglement of the threads of the future 
plot. In Miss Wilkins's "New England 
Nun " there is an extremely skillful example 
of this kind of plot. The story opens with a 
picture of Louisa Ellis, an "old maid," sitting 
in her quiet room on a summer afternoon, 
and receiving an embarrassed visit from her 
betrothed lover, Joe Daggett. Their en- 
gagement has lasted fifteen years, while he 
has been absent in Australia seeking his for- 
tune. Each has been faithful to the other, 
yet now that the wedding is only a week 
away, disorder and confusion seem entering 



136 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

her cloistered life in place of peace and har- 
mony. She does not dare tell her lover how 
much, after all, she dreads to marry him. 
He, too, has become aware that their passion 
is a thing of the past ; he is conscious of a 
love for Lily Dyer, a younger woman ; but 
he is as finely loyal to his old promise as 
Louisa herself. How does Miss Wilkins 
cut the knot? By making Louisa stroll 
down the road one moonlight night and un- 
wittingly overhear a conversation between 
Joe and Lily, in which she learns that they 
love each other, but that they both believe it 
cruel and wrong for Joe to break his engage- 
ment with Louisa. It is now easy and natural 
for Louisa to release Joe, to see him married 
to Lily Dyer, and happily, prayerfully, to 
number her own days " like an uncloistered 
nun." 

The "three- I* mav De added that the essen- 
ciovct" re- ti 8 ! elements of this three-cornered 
lationship. g ame played by two men and one 
woman, or two women and one man, here 
handled by Miss Wilkins in one of its most 
innocent and unsophisticated phases, present 
to the fiction-writer, for purely technical rea- 
sons, a fascinating problem. Such a three- 



THE PLOT 137 

fold relationship inevitably involves the play 
of strong passions, the elements of fear, of 
jealousy, of danger, of surprise, of remorse ; 
and all of these are furnished, as it were, ready 
to the novelist's hand by the theme itself. 

As was pointed out in the chap- complication 
ter devoted to the drama, the ofplot 
complication of the plot begins with the 
introduction of new incidents or new per- 
sonages, or with the introduction of new mo- 
tives growing out of the relationships which 
are made evident at the outset of the story. 
In Hawthorne's " The House of the Seven 
Gables " the opening of the shop marks the 
beginning of the complication. In " The 
Scarlet Letter "it is the entrance of Roger 
Chillingworth. It is an interesting question 
how far the complication of the plot may 
be carried out without confusing or perplex- 
ing the reader. Novelists of the Latin races 
have commonly given evidence of a greater 
instinct for unity, are more simple in the 
constructive features of their work, than 
those of the Teutonic races. The novels of 
Dickens and Thackeray probably mark the 
extreme limit of complexity, as regards 
the number of personages introduced, the 



138 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

variety of sub-plots, and the length of time 
required for the main action of the story. 
There are said to be seventy-five personages 
in " Our Mutual Friend/' and sixty in " Van- 
ity Fair." In " Middlemarch " there are 
twenty-two persons whose portraits are painted 
at full length. 1 American fiction has appar- 
ently been more influenced of late by Con- 
tinental than by English examples, and the 
result has been a more marked simplicity in 
construction. 

incident and In studying the complication of 
situation. ^ ^[ ^ ft, often becomes advan- 
tageous to distinguish between incidents 
which reveal the true nature of the charac- 
ters and situations which determine char- 
acter. The difference in the thing is more 
to be insisted upon than the differentiation 
of names, and yet it is fair to characterize as 
an " incident " any event which gives the 
reader a clearer insight into the constitution 
and motives of the personages in the story. In 
"The House of the Seven Gables" the elabo- 
rate scene at the breakfast-table has for its 
sole aim the presentation of the character of 

1 C. F. Johnson, Elements of Literary Criticism, p. 89. 
New York: Harpers. 



THE PLOT 139 

Clifford, and the whole chapter is devoted to 
the revelation of the finer and more aesthetic 
traits of his worn, delicate nature. It is for 
this purpose only that the breakfast-table 
scene finds its justification. In " Henry 
Esmond," Harry's drive on the downs with 
Lord Mohun is the incident used to give a 
more complete exposition of character, as 
well as of the relationship gradually growing 
up between Harry and Rachel Esmond. It 
determines nothing. It simply informs us 
of what is going on, what must be reckoned 
with. On the other hand, to take another 
illustration from the same novel, the scene 
where Harry sees Beatrix descending the 
staircase, and also the one where Harry 
breaks his sword in the presence of the Pre- 
tender, or in " The House of the Seven 
Gables " again, in the scene where Judge 
Pyncheon demands entrance into the parlor 
and is refused, — these are situations which 
really determine character as well as reveal it. 
Esmond is a different man after those scenes 
have been depicted ; and Judge Pyncheon has 
himself been judged. 

Perhaps enough has been said 
in the third chapter to illustrate 



140 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

the similarity between the climax in the novel 
and the climax in the play. In both of these 
parallel forms of literature there is commonly 
some scene which marks the greatest tension, 
the keenest suspense, involved in the relation 
of the characters. The elopement of Stephen 
Guest and Maggie Tulliver, Gwendolen's aw- 
ful moment of hesitation when Grandcourt is 
struggling in the water, will illustrate George 
Eliot's management of climax passages. In 
such passages the personal forces involved 
are for the instant in equilibrium. Thence- 
forward everything sweeps on to the denou- 
ment or catastrophe of the story. There is 
little difference between the novel and the 
play in the technical disposition of the series 
of incidents and situations which make up 
the " rising " and the " falling " action. 

There is, however, a noticeable 

Catastrophe. .... . 

distinction in the technical handling 
of the catastrophe. The absolute necessity 
in the drama of externalizing upon the stage 
the forces knit together in the final struggle 
makes compulsory the actual exhibition of 
various events which the novelist would pre- 
fer to suggest merely. Indeed, it has come 
to be the favorite theory with a certain 



THE PLOT 141 

school of psychological novelists that, as life 
seldom presents any dramatic catastrophes, 
fiction had better avoid catastrophes too. In 
the novels of this sort nothing in particular 
occurs. At the close we miss the " God 
bless you, my children ! " and also the tragic 
allotment of disaster or disgrace. The char- 
acters live on, quite as if nothing had hap- 
pened, and it is only the new insight into 
personality, the new descriptions of the nat- 
ural world or of social forces, which the 
reader has as a reward for his pains. 

All this turns, as a matter of The charac- 
course, upon the relation of the ternovel - 
personages to the underlying theme. In the 
novel of character, as opposed to the novel of 
incident, the author is chiefly concerned with 
the solution of certain problems of emotion 
or of will. When he has worked these out 
to his satisfaction, his task is finished, and 
he becomes relatively indifferent to the final 
disposition of all the personages of the tale. 
It is well known that Hawthorne added the 
present closing chapter to " The Marble 
Faun " at the request of his publishers, and 
this fact suggests the irreconcilable difference 
between the point of view of the romancer 



142 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

absorbed in moral problems and of the reader 
who merely wants to know what happened 
u ever afterwards." 

The plot- I n the plot-novel, on the other 

noveL hand, the inner truth of character 

may often be neglected or distorted, pro- 
vided successive shocks of surprise and plea- 
sure are cleverly arranged. The detective 
story, for instance, deals chiefly with the 
elements of curiosity and suspense. But the 
curiosity, while it must be stimulating, must 
not be carried to the extreme of perplexity, 
and the suspense must not be too long sus- 
tained. In proportion as the stress is laid 
upon adventure merely, as in the picaresque 
novel, there need be little if any complexity 
in the plot. The mere succession of inci- 
dents, like those in Stevenson's " St. Ives," 
is enough to hold the fascinated attention of 
the reader. The weakness, however, in many 
of the modern types of the novel of adven- 
ture, is not due to placing too much stress 
upon mere incident as an element, but to 
the fact that character-interest has become a 
negligible quantity. If the reader does not, 
for the time being, believe in the reality of 
those characters whose adventures he is asked 



THE PLOT 143 

to follow, he soon finds himself little con- 
cerned with the adventures. For, after all, 
as the history of the drama has shown so abun- 
dantly, that which perennially fascinates us 
in the human spectacle is the exhibition of 
character in action. Characters who do not 
act, and conversely the mere outward show 
and stir of movement not informed by any 
real intellectual or passional life, alike fail to 
move our interest, our hopes, or fears. 

The question of suspense in the Mystery and 
plot leads naturally to the element m y stificatlon - 
of mystery. In any good story we are led 
to a normal interest both in what the charac- 
ters will do under the stress of unsuspected 
circumstances and in the shape which events 
will take. But this expectation of " some- 
thing evermore about to be," which lends in- 
terest to fiction as it does to life, must be dis- 
tinguished from that element of mystery with 
which many novelists have loved to surround 
certain of their characters, and in which they 
have liked to hide the intricacies of their 
plots. It is in this sense that Miriam in " The 
Marble Faun " is a mysterious character, and 
that there is a " mystery " in most detective 
stories. While this element of mystery is 



144 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

by no means essential to the interest of a 
work of fiction, it is capable of the most 
artistic handling. But when the mystery 
becomes mystification, when both the person- 
ages in the story and the readers of the story 
are deliberately fooled by the author, the 
book commonly pays at last the penalty of 
this deception. When we learn at the end 
of Mrs. Kadcliffe's "Mysteries of Udolpho" 
that all the mysterious terrors which have 
played such a potent role in the plot were the 
result of a mechanical contrivance, it is im- 
possible to reread the book with any of those 
delightful thrills of horror which the impres- 
sionable reader experienced upon the first 
reading. But between this deliberate decep- 
tion of the reader and the painful efforts of 
some realistic novelist to place the reader in 
possession of all the facts, there is an infinite 
variety of possible methods. Perhaps the 
critic cannot do more than say that that book 
is likely to give the most pleasure to the reader 
which presents, in accordance with the con- 
ventions and in the terms of art, the sense of 
uncertainty, the blindfold striving, the con- 
stant awaiting of the revelation of the coming 
moment, which play such an appreciable part 
in life itself. 



THE PLOT 145 

Closely allied with the element 

,. • . , P . t Accident. 

ot mystery is that ot accident, 
sometimes used as a complicating but more 
often as a resolving force. It is accident that 
weaves and unravels the plot of many a novel. 
The hero picks up a handkerchief, or steps 
on a lady's tain, or unwittingly insults an 
unknown rival, or knocks at the wrong door 
of an inn, and upon these trivialities hangs, 
or seems to hang, his entire fortune. Simi- 
larly, when the climax of a story has been 
reached, there is often in fiction, as in the 
drama, some petty incident, apparently acci- 
dental but really hidden deep in the nature 
oj^hings, which determines the#^astroplie« 
^Wndeed, it may be said that it 

-,.,,« Retribution. 

matters little how frequently the 
novelist complicates or simplifies his plot by 
the introduction of the element of accident, 
provided the accidents seem to be thus a 
part of the natural order of things. Rich- 
ard the Lion-Hearted dies by a chance arrow, 
and yet what other fate would be so inevit- 
able to an adventurous, reckless, wandering 
hero ? Bill Sykes hangs himself with a noose 
of his own making, and yet Dickens seems 
to be a fellow-worker with Providence in de- 



146 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

signing such an appropriate and wholly pleas- 
ing end for such a villain. It is a tempta- 
tion to the unskilled novelist to kill off his 
personages at a convenient time, to resort 
to all sorts of advantageous and unexpected 
devices to get rid of the superfluous figures 
in his story. But to link apparently acci- 
dental, external circumstances with inner 
laws of character and conduct, to make what 
happens to the characters a fit result of all 
which the characters have done or been in 
the past, gives an opportunity for the most 
profound insight into the moral structure of 
the world. When Judge Pyncheon tries by 
brute energy and with deadly hatred of pur- 
pose to force his way into the little parlor of 
the Pyncheon house, Hepzibah says to him, 
"God will not let you." The Judge re- 
plies, " We shall see." And we do see 
through the long hours of the ensuing night 
the terrible retribution which came instantly 
upon him. Yet Hawthorne takes pains to 
suggest that there may be a perfectly natural 
physical explanation of the sudden death of 
the Judge. Not the "visitation of God," 
as juries are wont to say when at their wits' 
end, but an inherited tendency to apoplexy, 



THE PLOT 147 

joined with a moment of intense bodily and 
mental excitement, is sufficient to account for 
the Judge's death. An even more familiar 
example of extraordinary insight and truth 
on the novelist's part is evinced in the Tem- 
plar's death in " Ivanhoe." Here, too, a 
natural explanation is at hand. Ivanhoe has 
appealed to " the judgment of God ; " yet 
the Templar dies, Scott tells us, through the 
16 violence of his own contending passions." 
But the threads of the story are drawn to- 
gether with so sure a hand that the reader 
feels certain that this dread event is fated. 
" c This is indeed the judgment of God,' said 
the Grand Master, looking upwards — ' Fiat 
voluntas tua. 9 " 

It is hard to say, indeed, iust 

, i f • t • Fate in the 

what we mean by tate in discussing modem 
the denoument or catastrophe of the 
modern novel. It is easy enough in com- 
menting on the Greek drama to point out the 
beginning and the end of the Nemesis action, 
and the conventions of the Greek drama as 
well as many of its moral implications have 
descended to us almost unbroken. Yet it is 
hardly possible, in a world pervaded, like our 
modern world, by Christian ethics and a Chris- 



148 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

tian philosophy, that the old Greek theory of 
the role which fate plays in human affairs 
should still prevail. In one sense the world of 
art, the world revealed to us by the imagina- 
tion of the novelist or the poet, is a world 
which is neither Christian nor pagan. Even 
this imaginary world, however, can never be 
unmoral unless it be at the same time unreal. 
" Morality," said Mme. de Stael very finely, 
" is in the nature of things." The laws of 
human life itself, laws older than any pagan 
or Christian interpretation or revelation of 
them, assert that in any long view of life it 
is well with the good and ill with the wicked. 
It is true that in any stage of the world's 
progress it is possible that the individual 
artist may revert to an earlier, outworn type 
of philosophy and faith. He may cherish a 
pagan theory of the Christian world. Like 
Thomas Hardy at the close of "Tes&jof the 
D'Urbervilles," which is an admirable ex- 
pression of a poignant, thoughtful, yet thor- 
oughly pagan interpretation of life, he may 
utter a cynical jest at the moral order of 
this planet. Says Mr. Hardy, " Time, that 
arch satirist, had had his joke out with 
Tess." 



THE PLOT 149 

This is consistent with the theme « Poetic 
of the book, but it is inconsistent lustice> " 
with the world in which Mr. Hardy is liv- 
ing and with the noblest teachings of the 
greatest masters of his art. In assigning 
" poetic justice " to the men and women of 
their stories, they have succeeded most truly 
when they have allotted the fates of their 
personages in accordance with what they 
have conceived to be the laws of Divine Jus- 
tice. The profounder artists in the imagi- 
nary world of fiction, and the Providence, 
however named, who presides over the real 
world of nature and human life, are working 
on the same terms and expressing the same 
truth. 

In following the main lines of 

. _ p Sub-plots. 

action in a story, the student or 
fiction will do well to observe the different 
ways in which the main and the subordinate 
plots are related. Often the subordinate plot 
is the mere reflection of the greater plot, as 
the love affair of Launcelot and Jessica in 
" The Merchant of Venice " is the obvious 
replica of that of Portia and Bassanio. And 
where the theme of the novelist is philo- 



150 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

sophical or scientific, designed to show the 
presence in human affairs of certain lines of 
causation and certain modes of thinking and 
feeling, the lesser group of characters may 
often be used most skillfully to reflect, in 
different degrees, the main teaching of the 
book. Thomas Hardy's peasants furnish ex- 
cellent examples of this philosophizing, as do 
the rustics of George Eliot. Frequently the 
sub-plot follows inevitably upon the main 
plot. If the story of "Silas Marner" turns 
upon the redemption of a lonely old man 
by a child, it becomes necessary to provide 
a child for the purpose, and this leads to 
the invention of Godfrey Cass's unfortunate 
marriage. Very often, however, the sub- 
plot is joined to the main plot in a purely 
artificial fashion. The minor characters are 
designed to give variety or relief, to supply 
a love interest or an element of comedy, or 
to pique one's historical interest concerning 
some great person who is made to appear for 
the moment upon the scene. Rose and Lang- 
ham, although they are most attractively and 
carefully wrought figures, have nothing to 
do with the real plot of " Robert Elsmere." 



THE PLOT 151 

Savonarola has no role to play in George 
Eliot's " Komola " except in so far as he is 
introduced to give advice to the heroine in 
the hour of her need, and to illustrate cer- 
tain characteristic phases of fifteenth century 
Florence. 

Something has already been said 
about the danger of plot - deter- mined char- 

acters. 

mined characters. Where the plot 
requires a love episode the novelist is tempted 
to make a given man fall in love with a 
given woman "upon compulsion/' even if the 
natures of the two persons, as well as the cir- 
cumstances involved, protest against the alli- 
ance. There is no surer mark of the amateur 
in fiction than the fascination said to be 
exerted by certain characters who obviously 
have no fascination to exert. " Bright 
ideas " come to characters who could never 
by any stretch of the imagination conceive 
of a bright idea. We are assured of the 
sudden access of courage or devotion or 
folly in persons in whose temperaments and 
characters there is no room for these traits 
which it becomes necessary for the unfortu- 
nate author to discover and utilize. 



152 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

Finally, the action of the story 
lateatoset- itself should be related not only to 
the characters themselves, but to 
those circumstances and events indirectly 
involved in the tale, and furnishing as it 
were the background and setting for it. The 
plot of the "Tale of Two Cities/' for in- 
stance, must do no violence to the supposed 
characters of Dr. Manette and Sydney Car- 
ton, but it must also be faithful as far as 
possible to the spirit and the external facts 
of the French Revolution itself. Indeed, in 
the case of this particular book, it is well 
known that Dickens's imagination began to 
work on the period, upon the events and pas- 
sions of that stormy time, rather than upon 
the distinctive personages of the tale. He 
carried around in his pocket, for months be- 
fore he began to write the story, a copy of 
Carlyle's " French Revolution," familiarizing 
himself with the dramatic forces involved in 
that extraordinary epoch. When he came 
later to invent his personages and to assign 
to them their appropriate roles in the drama 
which they were to play, he depicted both 
characters and action in harmony with the 
enveloping circumstances, with the fears, the 



THE PLOT . 153 

hopes, the anguish, the suspense of the Revo- 
lution itself. If, as we saw at the conclusion 
of the preceding chapter, it is necessary that 
the characters of a novel should be con- 
ceived in reference to the part they are to 
play in the plot, we must now recognize with 
equal clearness that the plot itself must stand 
in artistic relation to the setting. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE SETTING 

" Either on that day or about that time I remember very 
distinctly his saying to me : ' There are, so far as I -know, 
three ways, and three ways only, of writing a story. You 
may take a plot and fit characters to it, or you may take a char- 
acter and choose incidents and situations to develop it, or lastly 
— you must bear with me while I try to make this clear ' — 
(here he made a gesture with his hand as if he were trying to 
shape something and give it outline and form) — ' you may take 
a certain atmosphere and get action and persons to express and 
realize it. I '11 give you an example — The Merry Men. There 
I began with the feeling of one of those islands on the west 
coast of Scotland, and I gradually developed the story to ex- 
press the sentiment with which the coast affected me.' " The 
Life and Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson, by Graham Bal- 
four. 

" It is the habit of my imagination to strive after as full a 
vision of the medium in which a character moves as of the char- 
acter itself. The psychological causes which prompted me to 
give such details of Florentine life and history as I have given 
[in Romola] are precisely the same as those which determined 
me in giving the details of English village life in Silas Marner 
or the ' Dodson ' life, out of which were developed the destinies 
of poor Tom and Maggie." George Eliot, quoted in her Life 
by J. W. Cross. 

Meaning of When we read Victor Hugo's 

the wora. u Ninety-Three," Pierre Loti's 
"Iceland Fisherman/' Tolstoi's "War and 



THE SETTING 155 

Peace," or, to take a modern instance, Mr. 
Frank Norris's " The Octopus," we are con- 
scious of one strong element of interest 
which lies outside of the sphere of character 
or action. This interest is provided by what 
we will call, for lack of a more satisfactory 
word, the setting. Sometimes we shall use 
this word as synonymous with milieu, — -the 
circumstances, namely, that surround and 
condition the appearance of the characters. 
Sometimes the setting of the novel corre- 
sponds precisely to the scenic effects of the 
stage, in that it gives a mere background for 
the vivid presentation of the characters. It 
will thus be seen that in the setting, that 
tertium quid which is neither characters nor 
action, we have something corresponding to 
what we should call " atmosphere " if we 
were to speak in the terms of art, or " en- 
vironment " if we were to use the terminology 
of science. 

The novelist secures the setting Basedupon 
of his stories precisely as he ob- vhat? 
tains his characters and his plot ; that is, 
by his observation, from his reading, and 
from that function of the imagination which 
recombines and invents, using the unassorted 



156 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

fragments of experience. Tolstoi's " War 
and Peace " reproduces the author's memories 
of the Crimean War. " Lorna Doone " is 
an accurate presentation of Blackmore's study 
of the Doone country. In Scott's Borderland 
novels, as everybody knows, there is an 
easily successful effort to suggest the atmos- 
phere of his own country-side ; and together 
with this Scott utilized all the materials fur- 
nished by his vast and miscellaneous reading 
to construct the imaginative background for 
his historical tales. But very few books 
present to us, as far as the setting is con- 
cerned, a strictly veracious, unaltered tran- 
script of life. The novel is rather what a 
painter would call a composition from stud- 
ies, and the studies are brought together 
from strange and unrelated sources. Yet 
even in the most Utopian of novels, where 
writers have striven to invent a new world 
of the future and to present their heroes and 
heroines in an atmosphere wholly unfamiliar 
to the contemporary reader, they have never 
succeeded in getting very far away from the 
earth we know. The greater triumphs of 
fictive genius have commonly been in those 
stories where the setting is that of the ordi- 



THE SETTING 157 

nary field and stream and town, but where the 
imagination touches all this with a new trans- 
forming light. 

The present passion for histor- Historical 
ical novels makes the subject of settin e- 
historical setting one of unusual interest. If 
one compares the work of Scott with that of 
George Ebers,the novels of Kingsley and Bul- 
wer Lytton with those of Mr. Stanley Wey- 
man and Mr. Maurice Hewlett, one will be 
conscious of an immense gain in accuracy. 
The growth of historical knowledge has been 
constant. There has likewise been a steady 
increase of interest in antiquarian detail. 
The elaborate and painful efforts of the 
modern stage to secure historically correct 
costuming has unquestionably affected the 
consciences of our novelists. More than one 
of them has confessed the toil it has cost 
him to prepare himself to write a book in- 
volving precise knowledge of such matters 
as heraldry or the details of monastic life. 
Some of our writers have shown extraordi- 
nary zeal in " getting up " their subjects, and 
have been able, in spite of it, to mould their 
material with some freedom. Nevertheless, 
generally speaking, one may say that as the 



158 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

standard of accuracy rises, the imagination, 
that other and indispensable end of the bal- 
ance scales, goes down. The spirit of truth 
to fact, as we have seen in the chapter on 
science, has often been hostile to the spirit 
of imagination. Doubtless there never were 
such persons as Scott's Saracens or Cooper's 
Ked Men, but fiction would be greatly the 
loser if Scott and Cooper had confined them- 
selves to the basis of demonstrable fact. That 
mediaeval world in which Scott's imagination 
moved so delightedly and with such incompar- 
able vigor and variety had no existence out- 
side of the pages of his novels. But " Ivan- 
hoe "is no worse a book from the fact that 
such Saxons and Normans as move through 
its pages never wandered over actual English 
fields. 
* The modern spirit of precise ob- 

Local color. . L x 

servation, however, has unquestion- 
ably aided many novelists in giving to their 
books the atmosphere of a definite locality. 
When a writer places the scene of his stories 
in the Tennessee mountains, a Californian 
mining camp, upon a New England hillside, 
or a Louisiana bayou, we can usually depend 
now-a-days upon a certain fidelity to fact and 



THE SETTING 159 

sensitiveness to local coloring. He has prob- 
ably made an honest effort to realize in his 
story the impression made upon him by the 
landscape and the people of those quarters 
of the world. 

The same is true of those studies 

Occupations 

of great human occupations which and mstitu- 

ii o • i tions - 

nave been so frequent in modern 

fiction. English politics or English clerical 
life thus affords an effective setting for Trol- 
lope's stories. Captain King chooses war, Mr. 
Hamlin Garland farming, Mr. Richard Hard- 
ing Davis cosmopolitan adventure, Charles 
Dudley Warner the life of the unemployed 
rich, Mr. Zangwill the life of the unemployed 
poor, as the setting, the enveloping action 
and circumstances of their stories. Preva- 
lent social ideas, long-standing social institu- 
tions, afford similar backgrounds for the work 
of the novelist. It thus becomes natural to 
speak of Scott as the romancer of feudalism, 
or of Mr. Howells as the novelist of Amer- 
ican democracy under contemporary social 
conditions. Other fiction-writers have used 
socialism or patriotism or monasticism as fur- 
nishing the underlying framework for their 
productions. In all these cases it will be 



160 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

noted that the setting is something which 
lies back of the characters, and which m ay- 
even be considered apart from them. 

Let us take one of the most 

Landscape #1 . . . . 

setting: striking instances which literature 

affords of the development of what 
was once a minor and accidental feature of 
the work of fiction into a recognized and im- 
mensely significant element of it, namely, the 
evolution of the use of landscape in fiction 
during the last century and a half. In Rous- 
seau's " New Heloise " there was a new force 
at work which the readers of that singular 
romance were not slow to recognize. It was 
the part which nature herself played in the 
story. The mountain, the lake, the stream, 
were there not merely for adornment, but as 
an integral part of the story itself. All the 
literary children of Rousseau have followed 
him in this recognition of the potency of 
natural scenery as influencing the thoughts 
and sentiments of human personages. In 
the fiction of Chateaubriand and of Victor 
Hugo, of George Sand, of Balzac, of Mau- 
passant, of Pierre Loti, there is everywhere 
to be traced that influence which was so ap- 
parent in the " New Heloise." 



THE SETTING 161 

In England and America the in- 
direct influence of Kousseau has century 

instances : 

been scarcely less significant. In Defoe - 
the earlier part of the eighteenth century 
there is almost no landscape setting worthy 
of the name. Scarcely more than half a 
dozen passages describing natural scenery in 
the modern spirit will occur to the memory 
of the reader of Defoe. One of the most 
striking isolated instances of the effective use 
of setting is that passage in Defoe's " Cap- 
tain Singleton " which describes, in terms 
that Kobert Louis Stevenson might have en- 
vied, a struggle with African wild beasts on 
" one windy tempestuous night : " — 

" During our encampment here we had several adven- 
tures with the ravenous creatures of that country ; and 
had not our fire been always kept burning, I question 
much whether all our fence, though we strengthened it 
afterwards with twelve or fourteen rows of stakes or 
more, would have kept us secure. It was always in 
the night that we had the disturbance of them, and 
sometimes they came in such multitudes that we 
thought all the lions and tigers and leopards and 
wolves of Africa were come together to attack us. One 
night, being clear moonshine, one of our men being 
upon the watch, told us he verily believed he saw ten 
thousand wild creatures of one sort or another pass by 
our little camp ; and as soon as ever they saw the fire 



162 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

they sheered off, but were sure to howl or roar, or 
whatever it was, when they were past. 

" The music of their voices was very far from being 
pleasant to us, and sometimes would be so very disturb- 
ing that we could not sleep for it ; and often our senti- 
nels would call us that were awake to come and look at 
them. It was one windy tempestuous night, after a 
very rainy day, that we were indeed all called up ; for 
such innumerable numbers of devilish creatures came 
about us that our watch really thought they would 
attack us. They would not come on the side where 
the fire was ; and though we thought ourselves secure 
everywhere else, yet we all got up, and took to our 
arms. The moon was near the full, but the air full of 
flying clouds, and a strange hurricane of wind to add 
to the terror of the night ; when, looking on the back 
part of our camp, I thought I saw a creature within 
our fortification, and so indeed he was, except his 
haunches ; for he had taken a running leap, I suppose, 
and with all his might had thrown himself clear over our 
palisadoes, except one strong pile, which stood higher 
than the rest, and which had caught hold of him, and 
by his weight he had hanged himself upon it, the spike 
of the pile running into his hinder-haunch or thigh, on 
the inside, and by that he hung growling and biting 
the wood for rage. I snatched up a lance from one of 
the negroes that stood just by me, and, running to him, 
struck it three or four times into him, and despatched 
him." 

Mrs- Fielding has some admirable par- 

Radciiffe. agraphs of out-door description, but 
ordinarily, even in Fielding's novels, it rains 



THE SETTING 163 

only to delay the coach, and not to affect or 
symbolize the sentiments of the passengers. 
But with the rise of the romantic school at 
the end of the century came an inrush of sen- 
timent regarding natural scenery. In such a 
typical novel of this school as Anne Rad- 
cliffe's "Mysteries of Udolpho," hero and 
heroine alike tremble into tears under the 
slightest provocation of the landscape. Here 
are four representative passages : — 

" It was one of Emily's earliest pleasures to ramble 
among the scenes of nature ; nor was it in the soft and 
glowing landscape that she most delighted ; she loved 
more the wild wood- walks that skirted the mountain ; 
and still more the mountain's stupendous recesses, 
where the silence and grandeur of solitude impressed 
a sacred awe upon her heart, and lifted her thoughts 
to the God of Heaven and Earth. In scenes like these 
she would often linger alone, wrapped in a melancholy 
charm, till the last gleam of day faded from the west ; 
till the lonely sound of a sheep-hell, or the distant 
barking of a watch-dog, was all that broke the stillness 
of the evening. Then the gloom of the woods; the 
trembling of their leaves, at intervals, in the breeze ; 
the bat, flitting in the twilight ; the cottage lights, now 
seen, and now lost — were circumstances that awak- 
ened her mind into effort, and led to enthusiasm and 
poetry." 

"The dawn, which softened the scenery with its 



164 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

peculiar gray tint, now dispersed, and Emily watched 
the progress of the day, first trembling on the tops of 
the highest cliffs, then touching them with splendid 
light, while their sides and the vale below were still 
wrapped in dewy mist. Meanwhile the sullen gray of 
the eastern clouds began to blush, then to redden, and 
then to glow with a thousand colors, till the golden 
light darted over all the air, touched the lower points 
of the mountain's brow, and glanced in long sloping 
beams upon the valley and its stream. All nature 
seemed to have awakened from death into life. The 
spirit of St. Aubert was renovated. His heart was 
full ; he wept, and his thoughts ascended to the great 
Creator." 



" From Beaujeau the road had constantly ascended, 
conducting the travellers into the higher regions of the 
air, where immense glaciers exhibited their frozen hor- 
rors, and eternal snow whitened the summits of the 
mountains. They often paused to contemplate these 
stupendous scenes, and, seated on some wild cliff, where 
only the ilex or the larch could flourish, looked over 
dark forests of fir, and precipices where human foot 
had never wandered, into the glen — so deep, that the 
thunder of the torrent, which was seen to foam along 
the bottom, was scarcely heard to murmur. Over 
these crags rose others of stupendous height and fan- 
tastic shape ; some shooting into cones, others impend- 
ing far over their base, in huge masses of granite, along 
whose broken ridges was often lodged a weight of snow, 
that, trembling even to the vibration of a sound, threat- 
ened to bear destruction in its course to the vale. 



THE SETTING 165 

Around, on every side far as the eye could penetrate, 
were seen only forms of grandeur — the long perspec- 
tive of mountain-tops, tinged with ethereal blue, or 
white with snow ; valleys of ice and forests of gloomy 
fir. The serenity and clearness of the air in these high 
regions were particularly delightful to the travellers ; 
it seemed to inspire them with a finer spirit, and dif- 
fused an indescribable complacency over their minds. 
They had no words to express the sublime emotions 
they felt. A solemn expression characterized the feel- 
ings of St. Aubert ; tears often came to his eyes, and 
he frequently walked away from his companions." 

" In the cool of the evening, the party embarked in 
Montoni's gondola, and rowed out upon the sea. The 
red glow of sunset still touched the waves, and lingered 
in the west, where the melancholy gleam seemed slowly 
expiring, while the dark blue of the upper ether began 
to twinkle with stars. Emily sat, given up to pensive 
and sweet emotions. The smoothness of the water 
over which she glided, its reflected images — a new 
heaven and trembling stars below the waves, with 
shadowy outlines of towers and porticoes — conspired 
with the stillness of the hour, interrupted only by the 
passing wave or the notes of distant music, to raise 
those emotions to enthusiasm. As she listened to the 
measured sound of the oars, and to the remote war- 
blings that came in the breeze, her softened mind 
returned to the memory of St. Aubert, and to Valan- 
court, and tears stole to her eyes." 

In the earlier decades of the Nlneteen tn 
nineteenth century this sort of century - 



166 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

sentiment was left mainly to the poets. The 
use of landscape as an aid in powerful emo- 
tional effects begins again, however, with 
Dickens. It is noticeably rare in Thackeray, 
although here and there in single phrases 
and sentences he introduces the element of 
landscape with singularly delicate effect. 
I But George Eliot, William Black, and Thomas 
Hardy have written whole chapters, one may 
almost say books, drenched with their feel- 
ing for the natural landscape against which 
their fictitious personages are relieved. In 
the stories of Ouida, and in some of the 
sketches of Lafcadio Hearn, the landscape 
sense runs riot. But if rightly subordinated 
to the human element, as is almost always 
the case in the novels of Turgenieff, or in 
the stories of Mr. Kipling or Miss Jewett, it 
becomes an element of extraordinary power 
and charm. 
„ MM Sometimes the landscape seems 

Used for m m r 

vividness. to be used for mere vividness, for 
giving us a clearer vision of the characters 
at some crisis of the story, or simply for 
painting an attractive picture. Here are a 
few sentences from James Lane Allen's 
" The Choir Invisible " which are designed 



THE SETTING 167 

apparently to do nothing more than give us 
an intimate sense of the physical presence 
of the things and the persons described. 

*' Near the door stood a walnut tree with widespread- 
ing branches wearing the fresh plumes of late May, 
plumes that hung down over the door and across the 
windows, suffusing the interior with a soft twilight of 
green and brown shadows. A shaft of sunbeams pene- 
trating a crevice fell on the white neck of a yellow col- 
lie that lay on the ground with his head on his paws, 
his eyes fixed reproachfully on the heels of the horse 
outside, his ears turned back towards his master. Be- 
side him a box had been kicked over : tools and shoes 
scattered. A faint line of blue smoke sagged from the 
dying coals of the forge towards the door, creeping 
across the anvil bright as if tipped with silver. And 
in one of the darkest corners of the shop, near a bucket 
of water in which floated a huge brown gourd, Peter 
and John sat on a bench while the story of O'Bannon's 
mischief -making was begun and finished. It was told 
by Peter with much cordial rubbing of his elbows in 
the palms of his hands and much light-hearted smooth- 
ing of his apron over his knees. At times a cloud, 
passing beneath the sun, threw the shop into heavier 
shadow ; and then the schoolmaster's dark figure faded 
into the tone of the sooty wall behind him and only his 
face, with the contrast of its white linen collar below 
and the bare discernible lights of his auburn hair above 

— his face proud, resolute, astounded, pallid, suffering 

— started out of the gloom like a portrait from an old 
canvas." 



168 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

Sometimes this vividness of effect 

Contrast. . . . 

is secured by the familiar artistic 
principle of contrast. The physical weari- 
ness of the figure in Millet's picture of " The 
Sower " gains in poignancy because of the 
infinite peace of the evening landscape against 
which the figure is outlined. In similar fash- 
ion, in Mr. Hardy's " The Return of the Na- 
tive/ ' what a Rembrandt-like feeling for light 
and shade is in that gambling scene on the 
heath when the two men throw dice by the 
light of glow-worms ! " The Choir Invisible " 
may be used for another illustration. The 
second chapter introduces Mrs. Falconer at 
work in her frontier garden, and these lines 
present the singular contrast between the 
woman and her surroundings : — 

"From every direction the forest appeared to be 
rushing in upon that perilous little reef of a clearing 
— that unsheltered island of human life, newly dis- 
playing itself amid the ancient, blood-flecked, horror- 
haunted sea of woods. And shipwrecked on this 
island, tossed to it by one of the long tidal waves of 
history, there to remain in exile from the manners, 
the refinement, the ease, the society to which she had 
always been accustomed, this remarkable gentle-woman." 

Harmony. The principle of artistic harmony 

is utilized at least as frequently as 



THE SETTING 169 

that of contrast. The Wordsworthian shep- 
herd seems to be, as Wordsworth indeed usu- 
ally conceives him, a part of the very hills 
where his sheep are pastured. Cooper's In- 
dians and frontiersmen blend into his forest 
backgrounds with a harmony that is the re- 
sult of true artistic instinct. Let us take 
additional illustrations from " The Choir In- 
visible : " — 

"And then more dreadful years and still sadder 
times ; as when one morning towards daybreak, by the 
edge of a darker forest draped with snow where the 
frozen dead lay thick, they found an officer's hat half 
filled with snow, and near by, her father fallen face 
downward." 

Or this : — 

" She quickly dropped her head again ; she shifted 
her position ; a band seemed to tighten around her 
throat ; until, in a voice hardly to be heard, she mur- 
mured falteringly : ' I have promised to marry Joseph/ 
He did not speak or move, but continued to stand lean- 
ing against the lintel of the doorway, looking down on 
her. The color was fading from the west, leaving it 
ashen white. And so standing in the dying radiance, 
he saw the long bright day of his young hope come 
to its close ; he drained to its dregs his cup of bitter- 
ness she had prepared for him ; learned his first lesson 
in the victory of little things over the larger purposes 
of life, over the nobler planning ; bit the dust of the 
heart's first defeat and tragedy." 



170 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

Or again : — 

" The next morning the parson, standing a white cold 
shepherd before his chilly wilderness flock, preached a 
sermon from the text: ' I shall go softly all my years.' 
While the heads of the rest were bowed during the last 
moments of prayer, she rose and slipped out. ' Yes,' 
she said to herself, gathering her veil closely about her 
face as she alighted at the door of her house and the 
withered leaves of November were whirled fiercely 
about her feet, ' I shall go softly all my years.' " 

It will be observed that in these 

Influencing 

tnecnarac- passages rrom Mr. Allen, as in 
countless similar passages from fic- 
tion-writers of our generation, the landscape 
setting actually influences the moods of his 
characters, and in this way plays no incon- 
siderable role in the evolution of the plot. 
M. Brunetiere, in a well known critical 
essay, has brought M. Zola to task for pre- 
tending that the varying color in the water 
in the gutter on different mornings should 
influence the action of his hero, Coupeau. 
But the principle which is here illustrated 
in its extreme form is one that cannot be 
neglected in a study of present-day fiction. 
Let us choose a more sympathetic instance 
of the influence of landscape on character. 
It shall be from Mr. James Shorthouse's 
" Blanche, Lady Falaise : " — 



THE SETTING 171 

"They came back down the steep path over the 
strewn and withered leaves. The rain clouds were 
sweeping from the valley across the sun, and the bare- 
ness and chill of winter was on the woods and on the 
blackened grass. A blank depression and presentiment 
settled down upon Blanche's spirit. It seemed to her 
as if she were walking in a troubled nightmare, amid 
difficulties which were absurd, yet from which she was 
utterly unable to extricate herself. It seemed to her, 
at least for the moment, that in all the illimitable uni- 
verse, limitless as the sky and plain before them, there 
was truly ' no other girl ; ' that in some mysterious way, 
struggle as she might, contemptuous as she might out- 
wardly seem, her fate was irrevocably bound up with 
his." 

Here is a longer and most significant pas- 
sage from the same story : — ■ 

" He threw away his half finished cigar, and placed 
himself by her side, and they walked up the woodland 
path that wound round the paddock. George Falaise 
stood looking at them for a moment as they moved up 
the path — but only for a moment. Then he turned 
away and moved towards the seat before the bay- 
window of the drawing-room — the same seat on which 
he had sat that first morning when Blanche had come 
out to him. There he sat down to finish his cigar. 

" The winter sun, setting behind the oak woods on 
the other side of the paddock, cast a kind of false and 
cold halo over the place where he sat and over the 
front of the house. He felt deserted and neglected. 
He hated this man. The cold winter sky, clear and 
soft and delicate though it was, out of the cloud tissues 



172 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

of which happy men might weave fairy colored wreaths, 
seemed to him dun and chill. 

" For about a quarter of an hour perhaps he had sat 
there. The rhythm of the breeze through the sur- 
rounding woods soothed him as did the narcotic influ- 
ence of his cigar, when the setting sun, just sinking 
behind the woods, cast a sudden glow of dying bril- 
liancy over the place, and above, over his head, a golden 
haze of glory spread itself, beneath the rain clouds and 
the deep winter sky. He looked up suddenly, and 
they were coming back. He rose, threw away the end 
of his cigar, and went toward them. 

" Damerle evidently had been talking well. What- 
ever he was he was no hypocrite. Whatever he felt 
for the moment he really felt. The climate, physical 
and mental, of Clyston St. Fay affected him, with an 
intensity which it would not have exerted upon another 
man less easily affected in other ways. George Falaise 
even, who felt himself, so to speak, a stranger and a 
pilgrim everywhere else ; to whom this silent village, 
this home where Blanche lived, was the only spot upon 
earth, so far as he knew the earth, where he seemed 
really to breathe — even he did not feel this excited 
revulsion and contrast of feeling and enthusiasm. 
Damerle had been speaking of high and sacred things 
and of the work which lay before them, for the girl's 
face was flushed, and her whole being and nature 
seemed instinct with a strange happiness and beauty 
which was not of earth. Never before, at any time, 
and most surely never afterwards, did George Falaise 
see her look like that, — the departing flash of sunset 
around her, the set purpose of devotion, the glory of 



THE SETTING 173 

unselfish love, the beauty which God gave to woman, 
all around her for a moment as they came up the 
path. 

" The angry, disappointed, perturbed spirit left him 
at this sight. All self-seeking, all self even, was lost 
in delight. He felt, in spite of himself, a supreme 
stillness and calm, a sense of result, of something, long 
wished for, being gained. It is a great mystery why 
such things are ; but to him, to whom so much had 
been given, had been added also the priceless gift of 
unselfish love. To what issue can love tend but to the 
happiness of the loved ? The perfect vision that awaits 
love must surely be this. At this happy moment, as 
it seems to me, many of us might well envy him ; yet 
at that moment the one thing in the wide universe that 
was denied him was the one thing upon which his heart 
was set. 

" As they came up the path the sunset glow faded 
from the sky above, and what a moment before had 
been a glory of yellow light was now gray and dark. 
They went back into the house." 

A more familiar illustration is in George 
Meredith's " Kichard Feverel," where the 
great storm scene towards the close of the 
story develops a new sentiment in the hero 
and affects profoundly the dramatic situa- 
tion. I Mr. Thomas Hardy, in his pantheistic 
interpretation of nature, finds it still easier 
to emphasize the intimate relation of his 
characters with their natural surroundings, 



174 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

and over and over again in his novels he has 
made nature itself take a hand in the evolu- 
tion of the plot. 

" Amid the oozing fatness and warm ferments of 
Froom Vale, at a season when the rush of juices could 
almost be heard below the hiss of fertilization, it was 
impossible that the most fanciful love should not grow 
passionate. The ready hearts existing there were im- 
pregnated by their surroundings." 

Tess of the Z>' Urbervilles. 

Determining ^ is even possible to assert that 

the incidents. ^ sett [ ng not on \j a ff eC ts the 

situations of the novelist, but that it fre- 
quently determines the nature of the inci- 
dents that are to take place. This is pecu- 
liarly true, of course, in the novels which deal 
primarily with some occupation or handi- 
craft. But even in novels of adventure, the 
novelist is compelled by the very force of 
circumstances to keep close to mere adven- 
ture. In a book like " A Gentleman of 
France " one is tempted to think that any- 
thing may happen, but after all only those 
things may happen there which are pertinent 
to the road, the camp, or the court during 
the progress of a particular campaign. In 
other words, the writer of adventure, who is 



THE SETTING 175 

apparently enjoying such unhampered free- 
dom, is in reality working within closely 
drawn lines of limitation ; he is bound by 
the very terms of his implied contract with 
his readers to supply them with adventure 
and with little more. We know pretty well, 
therefore, what is going to happen. It is in 
novels like " A Nest of Nobles," or " Anna 
Karenina," or "Adam Bede," or " The Choir 
Invisible," that we cannot tell what will hap- 
pen, because anything may happen. 

Finally, it is the setting of a story Giving ^^ 
which often gives the deepest unity t0 the b00k ' 
to the work as a whole. The setting is used 
to emphasize the fundamental idea of the 
book, to accentuate the theme, to bring all 
the characters of the story into proper per- 
spective. In a railway novel the scream of 
the whistle may be heard in every chapter. 
The characters of the story, from the presi- 
dent of a great system down to the humblest 
employee, all stand in certain definite rela- 
tions to " the road." It is " the road " which 
affects their f eelings, their ambitions, their ac- 
tions, and one need not have the anthropo- 
morphic imagination of Zola to conceive of a 
railway as a monster, either beneficent or ma- 



176 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

lign, which dominates the individual fate of 
every personage in such a novel. But in truth 
it is Zola who has given to our generation the 
most impressive examples of this myth-mak- 
ing instinct, which gives institutions like the 
department store, occupations like mining or 
farming, great campaigns like the Franco- 
Prussian War, great cities like Rome and 
Paris, each a personality of its own. In such 
cases one may freely grant that the setting 
is distorted, thrown into unnatural propor- 
tions, and frequently depicted with a morbid 
imagination that recalls the worst obsessions 
of romanticism. Indeed, it is largely because 
of this element in his work that Zola has 
been called by many keen critics essentially 
romantic rather than realistic. But what- 
ever the justice of this criticism, there is no 
denying that beyond most other novelists of 
our own day he has succeeded in making the 
setting of his novels reveal the essential 
unity of the book. That germinal idea 
which first stimulated the creative imagina- 
tion of the author remains with the reader as 
a haunting impression long after the persons 
and the action of the tale have faded from 
the memory. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE FICTION-WRITER 

" Quelle que soit la formule, il n'y a jamais au fond des 
ceuvres que ce que les hommes y mettent." 

F. Brunettere, Le Roman Naturaliste. 

' ' Every artist is a thinker, whether he knows it or not ; and 
ultimately no artist will he found greater as an artist than he 
was as a thinker." David Masson, British Novelists. 

" There is one point at which the moral sense and the artistic 
sense lie very near together ; that is in the light of the very 
obvious truth that the deepest quality of a work of art will 
always he the quality of the mind of the producer. In propor- 
tion as that intelligence is fine will the novel, the picture, the 
statue partake of the substance of beauty and truth." 

Hestry James, The Art of Fiction. 

We are entering once more upon AneW p haS e 
a new phase of our subject. In the oi the suljject ' 
last three chapters we have been studying 
the materials, whether of character or plot 
or setting, which are at the disposition of 
the literary artist. We are now to study 
the use made of these materials by individual 
men. What we have hitherto done may be 
likened to an investigation of the general 



178 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

relations of the art of painting, let us say, to 
the other arts ; then, applying a closer scru- 
tiny, we have watched the various colors 
upon the palette of the painter, and have 
noted some of the technical processes by 
means of which these pigments are utilized. 
We have now to scrutinize the painter him- 
self. 

For after all, the use of the 
wnd the materials of any art depends upon 
the man who employs them. The 
words of the great French critic, quoted as 
the first motto for this chapter, have been 
repeated in various forms by most of the 
writers who have thought deeply upon the 
expression of personality by means of art. It 
is conveyed in the famous formula " Art is a 
bit of nature seen through a temperament,' ' 
as well as in the more technical definition 
of the writer on sesthetics, that the artist is 
" the middle term between content and ex- 
pression." Yet this interest in the story- 
writer himself is a more or less modern 
factor in the development of fiction. As we 
recede towards mediaeval times, the fascina- 
tion of the story becomes increasingly de- 
pendent upon the tale itself rather than 



THE FICTION-WRITER 179 

upon the individuality of the teller ; and it 
is undeniable that the modern interest in 
literary personality has its seamy side. Per- 
sonal gossip about famous novelists has 
often taken the place of real criticism. No 
details of family history have been consid- 
ered too sacred to be offered to the public. 
In an age when a man is scarcely blamed for 
selling his father's love-letters for hard cash, 
it is not to be expected that the reading pub- 
lic will respect the reticences and reserves of 
private life. And one is forced to admit 
that an acquaintance with a fiction- writer's 
real experience of men and things, a famil- 
iarity with the more marked phases of his 
career, a knowledge of his friendships and 
his politics, of the things he hated, of the 
books he loved, is of great significance in 
the interpretation of his literary work. One 
can scarcely understand Balzac's novels with- 
out knowing something of Balzac himself ; 
and if, as Hawthorne has reminded us, the 
details of an author's biography often hide 
the man instead of revealing him, it is never- 
theless true that even in Hawthorne's own 
case a knowledge of his history affords one 
of the readiest modes of penetrating to the 



180 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

essential nature of his productions in litera- 
ture. 

The novelist's ^ ne fiction-writer's use of the 
experience, materials of his art is conditioned 
first by his experience. Experience provides 
the starting point for the work of the con- 
structive imagination ; it is a pier sunk into 
the solid earth from which the arch is sprung 
into the unknown. Here is a man who pro- 
fesses to interpret life for us. Well, what 
sort of life has he himself known ? What 
kind of men and women has it been his lot 
to encounter in his journey through the 
world ? Upon his answer to these questions 
depends very often his artistic verdict upon 
life itself ; that is, his handling of the ele- 
ments of character and action in the fictional 
world of his stories. It must be borne in 
mind, however, as we have seen in a previ- 
ous chapter, that extensive experience with 
men and things is often not so important a 
factor as intensive experience. " The Story 
of an African Farm " can be told, provided 
the writer has insight and imagination, by 
one who has never left the boundaries of 
the farm. It is not the number of men and 
cities which the novelist has seen that counts 



THE FICTION-WRITER 181 

so much as do the eyes out of which he has 
looked and the brain which has reflected 
upon these observations. For experience at 
best furnishes suggestions rather than com- 
plete details. Said George Eliot : — 

" It is invariably the case that when people discover 
certain points of coincidence in a fiction with facts that 
happen to have come within their knowledge, they 
believe themselves able to furnish a key to the whole. 
That is amusing enough to the author, who knows 
from what widely sundered portions of experience — 
from what a combination of subtle, shadowy sugges- 
tions, with certain actual objects and events — his story 
has been formed." 

In another of her letters she wrote : — 

"There is not a single portrait in 'Adam Bede,' 
only the suggestions of experience wrought up into new 
combinations." 

Secondly, the fiction- writer's use The noveUs t' s 
of the materials of his craft turns thou s ht ' 
upon his thought as well as upon his experi- 
ence. That is an admirable passage in Pro- 
fessor Masson's book upon " British Nov- 
elists : " "Every artist is a thinker, whether 
he knows it or not ; and ultimately no artist 
will be found greater as an artist than he 
was as a thinker." Sidney Lanier had this 
distinction in mind when he said of Edgar 



182 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

Allan Poe that Poe did not know enough 
to be a great poet. He did not mean that a 
man rises in the capacity to produce poetry 
in accordance with the amount of informa- 
tion he possesses, but rather that one very 
real test of a poet's greatness is his power to 
coordinate the results of experience, to reflect 
upon the diverse phenomena of human life, 
and to construct, at least to some degree, a 
philosophical unity from the confused im- 
pressions which life offers. Yet the artist's 
power of thought is but one of the elements 
by which his work is to be judged. Dickens 
was surely not a thinker in the sense in 
which George Eliot was a thinker, nor was 
Dumas a thinker in the sense in which that 
word may be applied to Balzac. There is 
here, as everywhere in the world of art, a 
variety of equipment and a difference of 
gifts. 

Thirdly, this difference is never 
more sharply marked than in the 
varying capacities of different writers for feel- 
ing and expressing emotion — emotion called 
forth by their experience of life and reflection 
upon its phenomena. With a certain type 
of fiction- writers, as for instance Trollope, 



THE FICTION-WRITER 183 

the capacity for emotion seems to be defec- 
tive, though this does not prevent admirable 
work within certain limits. But there is no 
limitation which more sharply sets the bounds 
for a man's possible achievement. In other 
writers, of whom Dickens is the readiest ex- 
ample, we are constantly called upon to ob- 
serve the evidence of overwrought emotion. 
Dickens is forever bidding us laugh or cry 
where Trollope simply asks us to look. Fre- 
quently, too, a work of fiction seems to owe 
its origin to the author's instinctive love or 
hatred for certain objects. There is where 
the novel and the eulogy on the one side, 
and the novel and the satire on the other, 
touch hands. Here is a striking illustra- 
tion of hatred furnishing the artistic motive 
for an extraordinary masterpiece of fiction. 
Flaubert, writing of his " Madame Bovary," 
says to a correspondent : — 

"They think me in love with the real, whereas I 
execrate it : it is out of hatred of it that I have under- 
taken this book. . . . Do you really believe that this 
mean reality, whose reproduction disgusts you, does 
not make my gorge rise as much as yours ? If you 
knew me better, you would know that I hold the every- 
day life in detestation. Personally I have always 
kept myself as far away from it as I could. But 



184 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

aesthetically I wanted this time, and only this time, to 
exhaust it thoroughly." 

More significant still is the in- 
fluence of the artist's imagination 
upon his use of the materials of his art. It is 
a kind of resultant of his experience, thought, 
and emotion. Imagination, in the words of 
the Century Dictionary, is " The act or power 
of presenting to consciousness objects other 
than those directly and at that time produced 
by the action of the senses." Without at- 
tempting any arbitrary classification, we may 
note that the imagination of the novelist is 
constantly dealing with two classes of what 
we agree to call realities, and also with two 
classes of what are commonly designated as 
unrealities. 

Dealing with What <*0 We mean b J tneSe 

realities. « rea lities " ? In the first place, 
the imagination of the story-teller is con- 
tinually at work in depicting things in the 
physical world as they are. The objects and 
events upon which the light of the imagina- 
tion is turned are brought home to the ev- 
ery-day consciousness of the matter-of-fact 
reader. Defoe does not meddle in the least 
with " things as they are ; " he contents 



THE FICTION-WRITER 185 

himself with painting exact, vivid pictures of 
them, without seeming to alter his facts by a 
hair's breadth. He achieves a triumph of 
the artistic imagination ; but it is equally a 
triumph of that imagination when the artist 
portrays the work of those spiritual forces 
which are not to be apprehended by the 
physical senses. For in dealing with the 
mysteries of personality, with the prof ounder 
forces of the spiritual world, the imagination 
is penetrating to another and more veritable 
reality; not what Hawthorne called "the 
big, solid, tangible unrealities " of the actual 
world, but that world which is no less eter- 
nal for being unseen. I remember hearing 
a clever woman say of a man who reproached 
a certain novelist for lack of imagination : 
" Mr. A. forgets that imagination consists in 
seeing things as they are, and not as they 
are not." 

As for " unrealities," there are Dealing with 
two fields where the writer's im- ^"a 1 " 168 - 
agination is called upon to display itself. 
There is first a mysterious borderland, a 
shadowy half-world, between the realm of 
unquestioned spiritual forces and the realm 
where the fear of superstition holds full sway. 



186 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

The novelists of the " School of Terror," at 
the end of the eighteenth century, reveled 
to their hearts' desires in this ghostly atmos- 
phere of apparitions, portents, spirits, witches, 
and devils. As mankind advances in intel- 
ligence and scientific knowledge, it is con- 
stantly reducing the territory of the unknown, 
beating back this frontier of darkness and 
evil. Many of the phenomena, however, 
which in one generation would be accredited 
to demoniac possession, witchcraft, or the 
mysterious influence of other personalities, 
are in a later generation, as the history 
of hypnotism and telepathy so abundantly 
proves, capable of scientific demonstration. 
Such subjects still offer a tempting field, 
perhaps a field more tempting than ever to 
the imagination of the fiction- writer ; but the 
theme itself becomes transferred, with the 
advance of civilization, from the realm of 
the unreal to the realm of the real. And 
finally, the imagination frequently exhibits 
its power in dealing with a second variety 
of the unreal, namely, the physical world 
of things as they are not. Nothing in the 
work of Victor Hugo or of Dickens is more 
impressive and masterful than the " pathetic 



THE FICTION-WRITER 187 

fallacy " by means of which they love to 
distort our vision of the physical world, 
and seem to make its external phenomena 
and its secret forces sympathize with the 
spirit and the fate of their human char- 
acters. Such passages do violence, indeed, 
to the demonstrable truth of fact, but they 
often succeed in interpreting a higher truth 
of spiritual emotion, — the " truth of the 
human heart," which Hawthorne thought it 
the function of the romancer to express. 

These illustrations of the four 
fields in which the imagination dis- stages of 
plays itself will possibly throw 
some light upon Mr. Brander Matthews's 
frequently discussed theory concerning the 
four stages in the evolution of fiction. He 
has remarked with indisputable acuteness 
that the development of fiction has been from 
■" the Impossible to the Improbable, thence 
to the Probable, and finally to the Inevita- 
ble." It is a convenient formula to bear in 
mind; but one must also remember that fic- 
tion displays a constant tendency towards 
reversion to primitive types, and that in any 
stage of the development of literature, writ- 
ers may arise who rely for their power upon 



188 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

modes of thought and feeling which the race 
has apparently outgrown. 
Limitations of In studying the artistic produc- 
personaiity. tiveness of any man, it is necessary 
to take into account the limitations of his 
personality. Browning's line, " and thus we 
half -men struggle," may as pertinently be 
applied to the novelist as to any other mem- 
ber of the human family. Those limitations 
of thought, experience, and emotion which 
have just been discussed, as well as the de- 
ficiencies in moral insight which we have still 
to notice, must always be set down on the 
debit side of an author's real accomplish- 
ment. Even if he have the very highest en- 
dowment in the range of activities already 
indicated, he may lack that final creative im- 
pulse, that surplusage of vitality, which drives 
him to the making of a genuine book. 

Limitations No less sharply defined limita- 
of the age. ^ ons are to j^ tracec [ m the in- 
fluence of the author's generation upon his 
own productiveness. The history of litera- 
ture furnishes abundant illustration of authors 
born out of due time. Matthew Arnold's 
well known criticism of the poet Gray turns 
not only upon the fact that Gray "never 



THE FICTION-WRITER 189 

spoke out," but upon the causes that un- 
derlay this fact; namely, the influence of 
a prosaic age upon the sensitive mind of 
the academic poet. There have been many 
belated romanticists like Cervantes, belated 
Elizabethans like Charles Lamb, and few of 
them have been able to say as Lamb did so 
cheerily: "Hang the age! I'll write for 
antiquity." It is only a rarely endowed in- 
telligence that is thus able to make its own 
choice of company. Ordinarily, a man is 
forced to speak the speech and think the 
thoughts of his own generation ; and a 
novel-writer, let us say in France, in the 
full tide of the scientific impulse of the 
seventies, finds it quite impossible to com- 
pose such books as he might have written 
had he been born in the romantic generation 
of the thirties. 

And every writer, furthermore, The novelist's 
has a special public, — provided he s * ecial P uWic - 
be lucky enough to have any public at all, 
— and this public soon develops a peculiar 
capacity for requiring from the novelist a 
certain product, and no other. It is in vain 
for men like Defoe and Stockton to write 
books differing essentially from those by 



190 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

which their first and great reputation was 
won. Some writers grow cynical under this 
enforced duty to produce a single kind of 
composition, and it has not infrequently 
happened that while the author's popular 
reputation has been sustained by works 
which he himself views in the light of " pot- 
boilers " pure and simple, he has found his 
deepest artistic satisfaction in producing a 
limited amount of work appealing to the 
most fastidious taste. There died not long 
ago a German artist who supported his fam- 
ily by painting comic little cherubic nudi- 
ties, and satisfied his real artistic cravings, 
meantime, by painting crucifixions which 
the public never cared to buy. This is only 
an extreme instance of a distinction which 
affects more or less directly the output of 
every novelist who works for the public. 
After he has become widely known, there 
is a definite commercial demand that he 
should turn out work in a particular vein, 
and he departs from it at his peril. Thack- 
eray is not the only famous British novelist 
who has complained of the limitations en- 
forced by the British Public upon the free 
presentation of the facts of life. Yet it is 



THE FICTION-WRITER 191 

doubtless better that the British Public 
should warn a novelist that he must not 
trespass upon a certain territory, than that 
it should order him to confine himself to 
questionable topics if he would satisfy the 
popular taste. After all, those writers are 
not the least fortunate who, like Jane Aus- 
ten and Oliver Goldsmith, have written mas- 
terpieces and quietly put them away in the 
drawer, leaving it to others, after an inter- 
val of years, to discover that these produc- 
tions were masterpieces. No doubt it seemed 
at the moment as if " The Vicar of Wake- 
field " and "Pride and Prejudice" represented 
wasted time and effort. But work done in 
this tranquil fashion is often surer of immor- 
tality than the novel which is " syndicated ?s> 
from one end of the country to the other. 

The work of the novelist is very T ne novelist's 
directly affected by his philosophy p™ 08 ^- 
of life. Yet it is by no means necessary that 
he should be conscious of the view of the 
world which he in reality maintains. Here 
and there, indeed, there have been memorable 
examples of a novelist writing to illustrate, 
or to reduce to absurdity, some philosophi- 
cal theory of the universe. Voltaire's " Can- 



192 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

dide " was written to ridicule the " whatever 
is, is right " theory, made famous by Leibnitz, 
Bolingbroke, and Pope. In TurgeniefFs 
novels there is a tolerably complete exposi- 
tion of political and philosophical nihilism. 
The philosophical theory of pessimism has 
never been more brilliantly exemplified than 
in the novels of Flaubert, and the middle 
and later stories of George Eliot drew much 
of their inspiration from the tendencies of 
positivism and agnosticism. These writers 
are all what Professor Masson would classify 
as " thought men " rather than " fact men." 
If they may not all have been able to pass 
an academic examination in the history of 
philosophy, each of them had a more or less 
distinct theory of the scheme of human life 
and its relations, or lack of relations, to the 
unseen world of spirit. 

ms practical It frequently happens that novel- 
doctrine, j^ W ^ Q j^ye troubled themselves 
very little with philosophical theories and 
generalizations about human life have never- 
theless with a fine unconsciousness delivered 
themselves clearly as to the meaning of life. 
Scott teaches us to be brave, Kingsley to 
be manly, Dickens to be kind. Mr. Henry 



THE FICTION-WRITER 193 

James instructs us that life is an art, and 
that to play the game properly requires in- 
finite finesse. Such writers may not realize 
precisely the impression which they have 
conveyed. They do betray, however, con- 
sciously or unconsciously, the view of life 
which they have formed. They " give them- 
selves away," not necessarily in any one 
book, nor in the productions of any one 
phase of their creative activity, but rather 
in the totality of their work. It is as im- 
possible to mistake the every-day temper, 
the moral attitude of a writer who has ex- 
pressed himself in a dozen books, as it would 
be to misunderstand entirely his action and 
his motives if we were to watch him through 
a dozen years of his life. 

In discussing the ethical aim of « Art ana 
the fiction-writer, we trench upon morals -" 
the ground of the old debate concerning art 
and morality. Has art — the sphere of aes- 
thetic enjoyment — anything at all to do 
with morals — the sphere of conduct ? If 
these two fields do touch each other, what 
is the nature of their relations ? These 
questions have been asked and answered 



194 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

more insistently and more bitterly concerning 
fiction than any other of the arts. 
The artist isa Let us begin by endeavoring to 
human being. ^ race ^he connection between the 

general moral attitude of the novelist and 
his excellence in his profession. We have 
already quoted the definition of art : " A 
bit of nature seen through a temperament." 
It is true that this definition emphasizes but 
a single function of the artist's complex task, 
yet that function is an essential one. The 
artist's own personality is as it were the 
crucible through which the " bit of nature " 
— the material for art — must pass in order 
to be changed into the work of art. What- 
ever affects personality, therefore, instantly 
and inevitably affects the work upon which 
the artist is engaged. Now sin is the nega- 
tion of personality. It turns a man into a 
brute. It minimizes the life of the spirit, 
until the spiritual faculties disappear. No- 
body denies this. The artist is a man like 
the rest of us. He is a moral being, and 
running the same moral risks as you and I, 
and presumably greater risks, owing to his 
finer organization. To say that his person- 
ality is not affected by the morality or im- 



THE FICTION-WRITER 195 

morality of his life is to place the artist out- 
side the pale of humanity. It is to deny 
him the very attributes that make him a man. 
To declare that an artist's art is in exact ratio 
with the morality of his private life would be 
an exaggeration, yet it would probably be 
nearer the truth than to say that his life and 
his art are wholly unrelated quantities. 

We should note that the honest Labor itself a 
labor of the artist is in itself a moraHactor - 
moral factor. We who are inclined to look 
merely at the finished art product, and not 
into the workshop where the product is 
wrought, are constantly tempted to under- 
rate the moral qualities which the excellent 
workman must possess. One of the most 
suggestive passages in Ruskin's lecture on 
" Art and Morals " is this : — 

" The day's work of a man like Mantegna or Paul 
Veronese consists of an unfaltering, uninterrupted suc- 
cession of movements of the hand more precise than those 
of the finest fencer : the pencil leaving one point and 
arriving at another, not only with unerring precision at 
the extremity of the line, but with an unerring and yet 
varied course — sometimes over spaces a foot or more 
in extent — yet a course so determined everywhere 
that either of these men could, and Veronese often 
does, draw a finished profile, or any other portion of 



196 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

the contour of a face, with one line, not afterwards 
changed. Try, first, to realize to yourselves the mus- 
cular precision of that action, and the intellectual strain 
of it ; for the movement of a fencer is perfect in prac- 
ticed monotony ; but the movement of the hand of a 
great painter is at every instant governed by direct and 
new intention. Then imagine that muscular firmness 
and subtlety ; and that instantaneously selective and 
ordinant energy of the brain, sustained all day long, 
not only without fatigue, but with a visible joy in the 
exertion, like that which an eagle seems to take in the 
wave of his wings ; and this all life long, and through 
long life, not only without failure of power, but with 
visible increase of it, until the actually organic changes 
of old age. And then consider, so far as you know 
anything of physiology, what sort of an ethical state of 
body and mind that means ! — ethic through ages past ! 
what fineness of race there must be to get it, what 
exquisite balance and symmetry of the vital powers ! 
And then, finally, determine for yourselves whether a 
manhood like that is consistent with any viciousness of 
soul, with any mean anxiety, any gnawing lust, any 
wretchedness of spite or remorse, any consciousness of 
rebellion against law of God or man, or any actual, 
though unconscious, violation of even the 'least law to 
which obedience is essential for the glory of life, and 
the pleasing of its Giver." 

What Ruskin, with characteristic eloquence, 
has here said of the painter is scarcely less 
true of the novelist. A task honestly under- 
taken, patiently carried through, is in itself 



THE FICTION-WRITER 197 

a bit of morality. There is something very 
fine in Emile Zola's steady devotion, for twenty 
long years, to a single artistic plan : the com- 
pletion of the Kougon-Macquart series of 
novels. Fifteen hundred words a morning, 
every morning in the week, every week for 
twenty years ; no wonder M. Zola bears the 
worn, tired, patient face of the worker. Even 
though the Kougon-Macquart series proves, 
as time goes by, to have been a huge blun- 
der, this does not lessen one's respect for such 
an example of fidelity to an imagined duty. 

Fidelity to such a duty is of " La i,orareest 
course a very different thing from orare "" 
the religious consecration which made Fra 
Angelico breathe a prayer whenever he lifted 
his brush. " He who has not art," says 
Goethe, in a tone of Olympian condescension, 
"let him have religion." But Fra Angel- 
ico' s painting was no worse for his prelim- 
inary prayer. The religious nature has 
often enough found a supreme expression 
through the arts. In a very true sense a 
man's art may be his religion, and where the 
religious element seems left out of an artist's 
nature, the great world's verdict commonly 
is that there is a defect in that man's art. 



198 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

Witness the plays and poems of the Olympian 
Goethe himself. 

a complete In aU this * am sim V l J claiming 

man - that the novelist, like the poet or 

the painter, should be as far as possible a com- 
plete man. A defective moral organization, 
a deficient spirituality, will in the long run 
count as surely against him as a dull wit or 
a clumsy hand. 

But precisely how does an artist's 

Immorality . . . 

and tech- immorality affect his work ? George 
Eliot's dictum that " A filthy mind 
makes filthy art " is doubtless sound, but it 
does not explain the process in question. We 
must look for the results of immoral conduct 
at the point where the specific immorality 
affects the artist's handling of the medium 
in which he works. One may declare with ab- 
solute confidence that Paderewski is neither 
a drunkard nor an opium-eater ; if he were, 
it would be physically impossible for him to 
retain his marvelously perfect control over 
the muscles of his fingers. He might perhaps 
be a miser or a thief without affecting his 
technique as a pianist ; but no miser or thief 
ever had the freedom and serenity of mind 
which are essential for the composition of 



THE FICTION-WRITER 199 

great music. Benvenuto Cellini was a noto- 
rious liar, sensualist, and murderer ; yet as a 
silversmith and designer he was one of the 
most admirable workmen of the Eenaissance. 
Here one may perhaps say that the effect of 
Benvenuto's immoralities was negative ; if he 
had not been so bad a man, he might have 
cared to attempt some of the more noble 
tasks to which contemporary artists devoted 
themselves. In Browning's poem, theft and 
treachery clip the wings of Andrea del Sarto's 
imagination, although he remains, as he was 
before his sin, the "faultless" painter. Such 
discussions turn largely upon the importance 
assigned to the element of technique in assess- 
ing the value of an artist's work. The more 
stress laid on technique the less important 
does the question of morality become, unless 
immorality results in actual unsteadiness of 
eye or hand. 

Or, to put the matter a little dif- The genera i 
f erently, we may say that the moral law ' 
element enters into every art in proportion 
as that art touches human life and charac- 
ter. All the arts, indeed, group themselves 
about human life, but they do not all stand 
towards life upon terms of equal intimacy. A 



200 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

mediaeval sculptor, chiseling grotesque gar- 
goyles for the eaves of a cathedral, is work- 
ing in a realm of art pretty thoroughly re- 
moved from human life and character. So 
is an impressionist landscape painter who is 
striving merely to reproduce, as cleverly as 
may he, certain color tones ; or a composer of 
old-fashioned Italian opera, basing artificial 
melodies upon the echoes of artificial feeling. 
Such artistic activities as these may be com- 
pared with Cellini's exquisite cutting of 
cameos; if the workman's hand and eye 
retain their normal power, his goodness or 
badness of heart is a matter of secondary 
concern. But in the composition of great 
music, or great poetry, or great fiction, mere 
manual dexterity occupies a subordinate 
place. The interpretation of life and char- 
acter becomes now the artist's all-important 
task, and a characterless, conscienceless man 
has no apparatus wherewith to decipher char- 
acter and conscience. He cannot interpret 
what he cannot comprehend. The old argu- 
ment of Quintilian that the good orator must 
be a good man — an argument that has 
never been successfully controverted — holds 
with equal force in the realm of fiction. A 



THE FICTION-WRITER 201 

bad man cannot become a great novelist. 
He might write excellent short stories ; he 
might even compose an excellent romance 
of incident and adventure ; but he could not 
write " The Newcomes," or " David Cop- 
perfleld," or " The Antiquary." The novel 
would be beyond him. 

In all this we must bear in mind, Allowances 
however, that we are dealing with t0 * emade - 
relative rather than with absolute values. 
The possession of rare literary gifts is no 
warrant that the possessor is superior to 
the weaknesses and vices of his own time, 
or of his own individual nature. There is a 
great deal of nonsense written about " the ar- 
tistic temperament " and the allowances that 
must be made for it. Yet the fact remains 
that the professional artist has usually been 
a somewhat specialized product of society. 
In the case of the double hydrangea, as of 
many other cultivated plants, beauty has been 
developed at the expense of fertility; this 
hydrangea does not bear fruit like the other 
members of the family of plants to which 
it belongs ; it fulfills its purpose by perform- 
ing the new function of producing beauti- 
ful flowers alone. By a similar analogy, we 



202 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

are inclined to make certain allowances for 
" genius," that is, for extraordinary endow- 
ments of special capacity. As with a soldier 
drafted for service, society tacitly excuses 
the man of genius from some of the civic 
duties and civic virtues. If he takes advan- 
tage of this freedom, however, we may be 
sure that he and his work pay due penalty. 
We may not be able to appreciate either the 
force of his temptations or the degree of his 
repentance ; we do not know, as Burns has 
pathetically reminded us, "what's resisted.'' 
It is enough to remember that in a world of 
erring men and women the " artist " has his 
share of human weakness and struggle, and 
that in the presence of such mysteries as 
" sin " and " personality " and " creative 
power " — all of which are involved in this 
discussion — it is safer to avoid dogmatic 
generalizations. 

The moral in- When we pass from the moral 
woS'ftseyi 16 attitude of the artist to the moral 
!udgeda?a influence of the concrete work of 
whole art, we are upon somewhat surer 

ground. It is easier here to ascertain the 
facts, and to base one's judgment upon a 



THE FICTION-WRITER 203 

wide comparison of experiences. We should 
note, for instance, that the influence of a 
book should be estimated by its effect as a 
whole, rather than by this or that detail. 
To select a familiar instance, it has fre- 
quently been pointed out that the sexual 
morality of Goethe's " Wilhelm Meister" is 
superficial, pagan, or bad, but yet that the 
influence of the book as a whole has been 
helpful to countless readers. There are some 
indecencies in Shakespeare's plays, and there 
is occasional grossness in Fielding's novels; 
but to emphasize such blemishes, and dwell 
upon them as if indecency and grossness 
were the characteristic qualities of Shake- 
speare and Fielding, is wholly to miss the 
splendid radiance, the robust humanity of 
these authors. 

Furthermore, a work of art, 

. . 7 And by artis- 

whether painting, or statue, or ticaiiy trained 
novel, should be judged by artis- 
tically trained minds. Only such minds can 
determine the character of the work; can in- 
terpret the conventional language which the 
artist is forced to use. Artistic discipline 
alone, as sculptors find it necessary to re- 
mind us, can teach us to distinguish the 



204 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

nude from the naked, the undraped from 
the undressed. The vast majority of culti- 
vated persons, in all civilized countries, feel 
that the undraped statue of the Venus of 
Melos, by its own inherent qualities, prohib- 
its indecent suggestion. If here and there 
some excellent person is to be found declar- 
ing that this statue is improper, the prudish- 
ness is not so much a sign of finer moral 
feeling as of defective aesthetic discipline. 
There are plenty of novels that frankly ap- 
peal to prurient and depraved taste, but 
before condemning, on moral grounds, a 
novel which has given delight to generations 
of mature readers, it is wiser to ascertain 
whether we have perceived the author's point 
of view and properly interpreted his inten- 
tion. There is rude common sense in Pro- 
fessor Raleigh's 1 blunt declaration "Books 
are written to be read by those who can 
understand them ; their possible effect on 
those who cannot is a matter of medical 
rather than of literary interest." 
"one man's This will serve to remind us of 
meat " the homely and useful proverb that 

" One man's meat is another man's poison." 

1 The English Novel, p. 171. 



THE FICTION-WRITER 205 

In feeding the mind as well as in feeding the 
body, it must be remembered that the same 
stimulus produces in different people very dif- 
ferent reactions. There is such a thing as 
dissolute music, but a musical ear and some 
degree of musical training is necessary in 
order to perceive it. Of two persons equally 
responsive to the appeal of music, and lis- 
tening to the overture to " Tannhauser," 
the " Venusberg motif " will run riot in the 
mind of one, and the " Pilgrims' Chorus mo- 
tif " solemnize and uplift the other. Both 
hearers are listening to the same orchestra, 
but they are hearing and dreaming different 
things. There are pages of fiction which 
to some readers seem written in letters of 
fire, so glowing is their passion, so intense 
the subtle suggestions of the text ; to other 
readers — or to these same readers ten years 
afterwards — those magic pages seem gray 
and cold. In all imaginative art the specta- 
tor, the listener, the reader, plays an active 
as well as a passive role ; he too must become 
for the moment a creator, a " maker ; " he 
lives, in a very true sense, in that imaginary 
world; and the forms and potencies thus 
created by the reciprocal activity of the 



206 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

writer and the reader are as various and as 
little capable of rigid classification as are 
the infinite varieties of individual human 
character. 

Most discussions of the morals 

Sexual mo- 
rality not the of fiction drift back to the single 

to ue con- question of sexual morality. No 
one who believes that " morality is 
the core of life," and recognizes the profound 
influence of sexual instinct in the actual 
ordering of human institutions, will quarrel 
with this tendency to scrutinize closely all 
that a novel may portray of the relations of 
the sexes. Yet such a scrutiny is apt to 
overlook the fact that it deals with but a 
single phase of morals. There are many 
other things that count, both in the business 
of this world and in the preparation for the 
Kingdom of Heaven. There are thousands 
of good people who are shocked — as per- 
haps they ought to be — by a story that 
describes in plain terms the yielding of a 
young man to sexual temptation, but who 
are not shocked in the least by a story that 
glorifies brute force, sings the praise of war, 
and teaches that for the individual or the 
nation it is might that makes right. Yet 



THE FICTION-WRITER 207 

which of these stories is really the more im- 
moral? Which is more dangerous to the 
life of the Kepublic ? 

Another aspect of fiction, very specific moral 
frequently discussed, but never, in purpose - 
the nature of the case, capable of absolute, 
dogmatic statement, is suggested by the ques- 
tion of specific moral purpose. When a 
novelist sits down to write a story, should 
he have a specific moral intention ? Mrs. 
Stowe is supposed to have had such a pur- 
pose in writing " Uncle Tom's Cabin," — to 
further the cause of abolition ; Dickens in 
writing "Nicholas Nickleby," — to drive such 
schools as Dotheboys Hall out of existence ; 
Mrs. Humphry Ward in writing " Eobert Els- 
mere," — to preach Elsmerianism ; and Miss 
Sewell in writing " Black Beauty," — to make 
people kind to their horses. Granting that 
these causes were praiseworthy, are the nov- 
els any better or greater because they were 
inspired by a definite moral purpose ? Be- 
fore I attempt to answer this question, two 
admissions should be made, one regarding 
the nature of fine art, and the other con- 
cerning the facts of literary history. 



208 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

We must admit that fine art, as 

Pine art has , . • l i 1 

no practical such, has no practical end what- 
ever. The pleasures which it af- 
fords are disinterested pleasures ; it creates 
for us an object for delighted contemplation, 
nothing more. Its divorce from the world 
of action is absolute. And prose fiction be- 
longs generically — in its highest reaches, 
at least — to the fine arts. The instant, 
therefore, that a work of fiction proposes 
as its end a definite action which is to be 
brought about through its influence — such 
as the acceptance of some creed, the reform 
of an abuse, the marshaling of certain social 
forces against other social forces — at that 
instant it ceases to be legitimate artistic 
fiction. It may be eloquent oratory, or clever 
pamphleteering, or effective sermonizing, but 
it is not the fine art of fiction any longer. 

The other admission, which ap- 

But fiction is , ,. , _ 

not "un- parently contradicts the nrst, is 
that as a matter of fact the " moral 
purpose " men have frequently written bet- 
ter novels than the " art for art's sake " men. 
In the words of Bernard Bosanquet, " His- 
tory shows that hazardous to art as the 
didactic spirit is, the mood of great masters 



THE FICTION-WRITER 209 

in great art epochs is nearer to the didactic 
spirit than to the conscious quest for abstract 
beauty." 1 The explanation is, I suppose, 
that the " moral purpose " men have on the 
whole been greater men, more adequately 
endowed in sympathy and imagination ; and 
since prose fiction is more intimately con- 
cerned with human life and character than 
most of the other fine arts, this fuller en- 
dowment of moral sympathy has added a rich- 
ness and vitality to the work of the " moral 
purpose " men. Art, as such, is indeed " un- 
moral ; " an Indian basket, a Greek vase, a 
Morris wall-paper design, a Persian rug, are 
neither moral nor immoral. But to expect 
that a novelist can tell us the story of Ar- 
thur Dimmesdale or Arthur Pendennis or 
Arthur Donnithorne, and preserve the un- 
moral aloofness of the designer of a rug, is 
to fly in the face of the history of literature. 
The novelist is a man, and the men and wo- 
men he describes are not alien to him. " Sunt 
lachrymae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt." 
Let us now return to our ques- 

x The novel 

tion about the novel with a specific with a pur- 

pose. 

moral purpose. Is it likely to be 

1 Bosanquet, History of ^Esthetic, p. 227. 



210 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

on that account the better novel ? The 
chances are that it is not. If it has subor- 
dinated artistic considerations to the exigen- 
cies of some ethical doctrine, it commonly 
pays the penalty. Tolstoi's " Resurrection " 
is a sermon ; its point will disappear with 
the changes in Russian society ; his " Anna 
Karenina " remains an enduring work of 
art. The "novel with a purpose " has often 
had the instantaneous influence, the wide 
currency of a pamphlet, but in a few years 
it shares the pamphlet's fate. The " novel 
of the season " is not the novel of the gen- 
erations. The cleverness of its adjustment 
to the popular feeling or fad of the hour 
makes it all the more hopelessly outlawed 
when that hour is past. A " Pride and Pre- 
judice," written for sheer love of the writing, 
is surer of finding readers after another hun- 
dred years than any " novel with a purpose " 
in our literature. 

But is moral earnestness, then, 

Moral passion , n i • i i i to 

has a place in to be forbidden to the novelist/ 
Have indignation against injustice, 
sympathy with the down-trodden, high ardor 
for human progress, and passion for the 
truth at whatever cost no place in the novel ? 



THE FICTION-WRITER 211 

Have Fielding, Scott, Thackeray, Dickens, 
George Sand, Turgenieff, Daudet, no right- 
eous indignation, no strenuous moral passion ? 
To ask such a question is to answer it. But 
these great artists in fiction used their indig- 
nation and sympathy and zeal for human 
welfare as they used any other materials of 
their art. The artist in them — save in rare 
exceptions — controlled and directed the re- 
former. They wrote stories of human life, 
not merely tracts for the times. There is not 
in modern English poetry a prof ounder moral 
insight, a nobler spiritual aspiration, than in 
Tennyson's " Palace of Art." It affects the 
religious emotions more than a dozen ser- 
mons ; yet it is not a sermon. It is a poem. 
The poet and not the preacher has held cap- 
tive the ear and the soul ; we are moved to 
the very depths of our nature, but we are 
not exhorted to go forth and accomplish a 
specific task. " The Palace of Art " is not a 
purposeless poem, but neither is it a " poem 
with a purpose ; " and the creative power 
which used the elements of intellectual and 
moral passion in building " The Palace of 
Art " is the same power that wrought " The 
Scarlet Letter " and " The Bride of Lammer- 



212 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

moor" and "Henry Esmond." In prose fic- 
tion, at least, if not always in the other arts, 
the laws of beauty sink deep into the struc- 
ture of human life, and a novel that utilizes 
the deepest and strongest instincts of the 
heart is not the less likely, on that account, 
to possess consummate and enduring beauty. 
If, as I have tried to indicate, 

The proles- 

sion of moral the presence ot a specific purpose 

purpose. . ,, <■ . 

is usually a detriment to the artistic 
quality of a novel, it follows that the au- 
thor's profession of a definite moral purpose 
is quite gratuitous. The eighteenth century 
men, with scarcely an exception, made the 
"moral purpose" plea in their prefaces. It 
became as conventional as the earlier dedica- 
tion to a patron. Defoe did it, but we know 
that that imperturbable liar wrote to sell. 
Richardson claimed that his object in writing 
fiction was " to promote the cause of religion 
and virtue." Fielding gravely advertised 
himself as a "faithful historian of human 
nature." But readers of " Clarissa Harlowe " 
and " Tom Jones " heed very little what the 
prefaces say about the author's motive for 
composition. In practical life we distrust a 
man who talks much about the good influ- 



THE FICTION-WRITER 213 

ence which he is trying to exert ; and the 
great public cares absolutely nothing about 
what the author believes to have been his 
purpose in writing. It cares only for what 
he has expressed in his book, and the novel- 
ists who write magazine articles and give 
lectures in order to explain their intentions 
would do well to profit by Goethe's advice 
to " create and not talk/' — " Bilde, Kunst- 
ler, rede nicht." 

The total impression made by any The novelist's 
work of fiction cannot be rightly artisticalm - 
understood without a sympathetic percep- 
tion of the artistic aim of the writer. Con- 
sciously or unconsciously, he has accepted 
certain facts, and rejected or suppressed other 
facts, in order to give unity to the particular 
aspect of human life which he is depicting. 
No novelist possesses the impartiality, the in- 
difference, the infinite tolerance, of nature. 
Nature displays to us, with an inveterate 
unconcern, the beautiful and the ugly, the 
precious and the trivial, the chaste and the 
obscene. If you lift up your eyes on a spring 
morning, you will see the bluebird flashing 
in the sun ; but beneath your feet there may 
be miry ways and the foul winter's refuse 



214 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

which nature, careless housekeeper, has not 
yet troubled herself to put decently out of 
sight. And a writer must choose whether 
he will look up or down ; he must select the 
particular aspects of nature and human nature 
which are demanded by his work in hand. 
A perfectly faithful " transcript of life " he 
cannot make, not even if he is a Shake- 
speare ; he is forced to select, to combine, 
to create. Stevenson wrote, in a characteris- 
tic passage : — 

" Our art is occupied, and bound to be occupied, not 
so much in making stories true as in making them 
typical; not so much in capturing the lineaments of 
each fact, as in marshalling all of them towards a com- 
mon end. For the welter of impressions, all forcible 
but all discreet, which life presents, it substitutes a 
certain artificial series of impressions, all indeed most 
feebly represented, but all aiming at the same effect, 
all eloquent of the same idea, all chiming together like 
consonant notes in music, or like the graduated tints in 
a good picture. From all its chapters, from all its 
sentences, the well-written novel echoes and reechoes 
its own creative and controlling thought ; to this must 
every incident and character contribute ; the style must 
have been pitched in unison with this ; and if there is 
anywhere a word that looks another way, the book 
would be stronger, clearer, and (I had almost said) 
fuller without it." The Art of Fiction. 



THE FICTION-WRITER 215 

Stevenson loved a paradox, and undoubt- 
edly emphasized the principle of conscious 
artistic selection more than most men of his 
craft. It is enough, perhaps, for us to recog- 
nize that a selection of some sort must be 
made. Alike in the fairy stories of Hans 
Christian Andersen, the story for " the young 
person " by Frank Stockton, and the grossly 
naturalistic books of those novelists who " see 
the hog in nature and henceforth take nature 
for the hog," there is a deliberate suppression 
of whole departments of thought and feeling, 
there is the building up of a new world, which 
may be, according to the artist's choice, better 
or worse than the actual world, but which is 
in any case different. 

This selection of subject, of ma- The lnstlnct 
terial, is accompanied by a kindred for r,eauty - 
instinct for the choice of form. Romantic 
and naturalistic epochs furnish constant illus- 
tration of the preference of content to form, 
of the desire to secure, at any price, the 
emotions of surprise and of recognition. But 
no epoch in the history of fiction is without 
illustration of the opposite tendency ; namely, 
to subordinate the element of content to that 
of form, to secure " effect " through symbols 



216 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

rather than by representation of objects. 
One sort of " effectivism " is as vicious as 
the other. The fiction that has yielded plea- 
sure to generations of readers is that which 
reveals a deep synthesis of form and content, 
a fusion of those two elements that enter 
into the work of art. Such a synthesis must 
be traced back to the writer's spontaneous 
instinct. It is a process antedating the con- 
scious choice of words, the conscious selec- 
tion of this or that literary formula. After 
all, a man is born evfyvrjs — with a beauti- 
ful, fair-proportioned mind — or he is not. 
Scott and Jane Austen and Hawthorne were 
ev$vr)<$, and their books reveal it. The de- 
sire to make beautiful things was an integral 
part of their personalities ; and in such things, 
in spite of every difference in training and 
method and outward circumstance, was the 
true life of their spirits. 



CHAPTER IX 

REALISM 

"Realism: the representation of what is real in fact . . . 
according to actual truth or appearance, or to intrinsic proba- 
bility, without selection or preference over the ugly of what is 
beautiful or admirable ; opposed to idealism and romanticism. . . . 

" The observation of things as they are, . . . and the consequent 
faculty of reproducing them with approximate fidelity." 

Century Dictionary. 

" Courbet was the first or among the first to feel the interest 
and importance of the actual world as it is and for what it is, 
rather than for what it suggests." 

W. C. Brownell, French Art. 

We are to discuss in this chapter 

1 tpp i i The need of 

a somewhat drmcult theme, — one defining 
that has long occupied the atten- 
tion of the reading public, and about which 
all the critics, and indeed most of the novel- 
ists, have at one time or another had their 
say. No term dealing with literary methods 
has been more current than " realism," and 
there is none that needs a more exact an- 
alysis. In connection with all the fine arts 
the word " realism " is used, but we do not 



218 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

always use it in the same sense. In criti- 
cising works of art the term is employed 
with at least four distinct shades of mean- 
ing. 

First, we speak of realism as op- 

As opposed to * 

conventional- posed to conventionalism. In de- 
corative work, for instance, there is 
usually no attempt to represent any partic- 
ular flower or tree, but simply to repeat a 
conventional pattern. But if in the carvings 
around a cathedral door we find among the 
conventional trefoils and dragons an effort to 
represent an actual plant or animal of that 
neighborhood, we speak of the " realism " of 
the mediaeval sculptor. In like manner, when 
the early Greek sculptors abandoned the 
stiff, purely conventional drapery that fell 
in wooden folds from the shoulders of men 
and women alike, and endeavored to give the 
effect of the actual garments then worn by 
the two sexes, it was, to that extent, a real- 
istic movement, though of course very far 
removed from the painstaking labor of the 
modern sculptor to represent real lace and 
real buttonholes. 

as opposed to Secondly, we speak of realism in 
idealism. distinction from idealism, meaning 



REALISM 219 

by idealism the " effort to realize the high- 
est type of any natural object by eliminating 
all its imperfect elements, — representing na- 
ture as she might be." Rosa Bonheur buys 
a horse, stables it next her studio, and paints 
it to the life. On the other hand, Regnault's 
(i Automedon taming the Horses of Ulys- 
ses " is said to have called forth this com- 
ment from two visitors : " You never saw 
horses like those ! " " No," said the other, 
" but I have been looking for them for forty 
years ! " Rosa Bonheur 's horse is more real- 
istically painted ; there is less idealism than 
in the horses of Regnault. Or, to take per- 
haps a better example, the Sistine Madonna 
is thought by many critics to be an idealiza- 
tion of a certain portrait by Raphael in the 
Pkti Palace at Florence. The slyness, the 
sensuality, has been taken out of the face, 
the features have been made more regular, 
the expression wonderfully purified, ennobled; 
the same woman is back of both pictures, but 
we speak of the "realism" of the Florence 
portrait, while the Sistine Madonna is so 
little of a portrait, is so idealized, that it 
becomes for most people a type of the Di- 
vine Motherhood. 



220 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

In the third place, we talk of 

As opposed to . 

the imagina- the realistic as opposed to the 
imaginative. Michelangelo took 
an extraordinary interest in anatomy, and 
was never weary of displaying his knowledge 
of the human figure. He has exhibited this 
knowledge, with equal mastery, let us say in 
his " Soldiers Bathing," and in the "Adam" 
of the Sistine Chapel, who stretches forth his 
hand to receive a living soul from the Crea- 
tor. Both are admirable studies from the 
undraped figure, but the Sistine picture is 
infinitely more than that ; it is a superb con- 
ception, a triumph of the imagination ; and 
we mark this difference when we speak of 
the strong, healthy, admirable realism of the 
bathing soldiers. A cognate, although some- 
what different, illustration may be drawn from 
the sphere of poetry. The " History of Dr. 
Faustus," which gave Marlowe the basis for 
his play, contains this description of the ap- 
parition of Helen of Troy : — 

" This lady appeared before them in a most rich 
gown of purple velvet, costly embroidered ; her hair 
hanging down loose, as fair as the beaten gold, and 
of such length that it reached down to her hams, 
having most amorous coal-black eyes, a sweet and 



REALISM 221 

pleasant round face, with lips as red as any cherry ; 
her cheeks of a rose-colour, her mouth small, her neck 
white like a swan ; tall and slender of personage ; in 
sum, there was no imperfect place in her ; she looked 
round about her with a roling hawke's eye, a smiling 
and wanton countenance." 

We are told the texture and color of her 
robe, the length of her hair, the shape of her 
face, the peculiarities of her features ; it is an 
effort at realistic description ; but note how 
the poet, with one beat of his pinions, rises 
into the realm of the imagination, and de- 
scribes by refraining from description : — 

" Was this the face that launched a thousand ships, 
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium ? " 

Lastly, it is customary, in speak- 

/;, « , 1 ,, Asop P 09edto 

mg or the line arts, to use the sentimentai- 
term " realism " in contradistinction 
to sentimentalism. We have this contrast 
in mind when we put French painters in the 
days of Louis XV., men like Watteau, Fra- 
gonard, Van Loo, with their charming arti- 
ficiality, their delicate and impossible com- 
binations of Cupids and fountains and lawn- 
parties, over against the Dutchmen who were 
painting, as honestly as they knew how, 
what Ruskin superciliously calls " fat cattle 
and ditchwater." We are conscious of the 



222 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

same contrast in poetry when we turn from 
"Childe Harold" to "Don Juan," from 
Keats's "Endymion" to Crabbe's "Tales of 
the Hall," from Rossetti's " Sister Helen " 
to Browning's " Fra Lippo Lippi," or from 
Tennyson's " Gardener's Daughter " to his 
" Rizpah." 

popular con- I* Wl ^ ^ nus be seen that when 
reSfsm £ we attribute realism to a work of 
fiction. ar ^ we ^y no m eans always use the 

word with the same signification. It would be 
hazardous to assert that the four uses I have 
illustrated — namely, as in opposition to con- 
ventionalism, to idealism, to the imaginative, 
and to sentimentalism — exhaust the possible 
meanings of the term. Realism in fiction 
may mean realism in any of the senses appli- 
cable to the fine arts. And furthermore, as 
the result of the discussions of the art of 
fiction which have been waged so continu- 
ously and on every hand for the past twenty 
years, there have been developed in the pub- 
lic mind three_ distinct conceptions of what 
constitutes realism in fiction. Let us note 
them carefully. 

copying Perhaps the most wide-spread of 

actual facts, these popular conceptions is this : 



REALISM 223 

that realism in fiction consists in copying 
actual facts. In the figure of speech most 
often employed, the realist is a photographer. 
He sets up his camera in front of you, with- 
out saying " By your leave," or " Now, a 
pleasant expression, please," and he takes 
you. His grocer has a peculiar way of tying 
up a package, his mother-in-law a trick of 
lifting her left eyebrow; the indefatigable 
realist secures a negative of each. He can 
do likewise with a railroad train, a line of 
bricklayers, the side elevation of a tenement 
house, or a landscape. Once let him master 
the mechanical process, and the world be- 
comes an infinity of potential plates. Those 
to whom this metaphor of photography seems 
too mechanical have another word to repre- 
sent the copying of actual facts, the word 
" transcribe." Realism means a " transcript 
of life " as it passes before you. " You can- 
not take too many notes," says Henry James ; 
" the human documents " are the all-impor- 
tant thing, cry the French writers. 
The second popular conception 
of the realistic method is that it choice of the 

-, iii i . -i commonplace. 

does not photograph or transcribe 

all the facts, but that it makes a deliberate 



224 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

choice of the commonplace. The "Boston 
Herald " remarked, during one of the high 
tides of American realism : " In the bright 
lexicon of the new school of fiction the un- 
interesting means interesting, and persons 
having any particular strength of character 
are useful only as foils for the flaccid and 
colorless." As a less pungent but perfectly 
fair statement of the point at issue, I will 
quote from a personal letter of a professional 
musician, a pupil of Liszt, and himself a thor- 
ough romanticist. 

"It seems to me that all art should idealize, and 
should select for embodiment characters and incidents 
which are raised by some unusual, inherent quality above 
the level of common every-day life, which we all expe- 
rience ad nauseam. They need not be less realistic. 
The diamond is as real a natural product as a lump 
of coal ; it is simply less common, more beautiful and 
valuable. I am aware that it is considered to-day the 
highest praise with a certain class of readers and crit- 
ics, to pronounce a book strictly " true to life," by 
which is meant the every-day life of all. It seems to 
me it is better to take these experiences first-hand, in the 
original, as they come to us all in plenty, and to seek 
in literature for those equally real but rarer experi- 
ences, only found in the exceptional moments and in 
meeting exceptional characters ; experiences with the 
higher, intenser phases of life, not so readily obtain- 



KEALISM 225 

able elsewhere. I am well aware that these views are 
only those of the school to which I, as artist, naturally 
belong, and realize that you have the fullest right to 
adhere to the other." 

I shall refer again to this extract from the 
musician's letter, and will ask the reader now 
simply to note the phrase " the every-day life 
of all/' to the representation of which, he 
says, the " falsely called realistic school " de- 
vote themselves. In "the every-day life of 
all " there are a hundred chances to one that 
the horse does not run away, that the house 
does not burn down, that the long-lost will 
does not tumble out of the secret drawer. 
Therefore, as Mr. Howells has triumphantly ) 
argued, fiction should not concern itself with i 
the hundredth chance, but with the ninety- 
nine : it should make deliberate choice of ( 
the commonplace. 

The third of the current concep- The « un . 
tions is not originally based upon P leasant -" 
the fiction of the Anglo-Saxon race, but has 
been imported from the continent, together 
with the books that have given rise to it. 
According to this conception, realism in fic- 
tion is synonymous with the " unpleasant." 
It deals with objects and relations which by 



226 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

the common consent of well bred people are 
tabooed in conversation. Its material may 
be that which is physically repellent, or that 
which offends the moral sense, or very likely 
a combination of them both ; and the pre- 
vailing British — and to some extent the 
American — opinion about this phase of 
realistic fiction is vigorously and exhaus- 
tively, though not very poetically, expressed 
in the line of Tennyson's second " Locksley 
Hall " about " maiden fancies wallowing in 
the troughs of Zolaism." It is to be noted 
that this conception of realism, like the pre- 
ceding one, is based upon the writer's choice 
of material rather than upon his method. 
We shall see later that it is quite possible for 
a novelist like Stevenson to select romantic 
material, but to depict it with realistic tech- 
nique. 

I should by no means wish to 
misconcep- assert that these three wide-spread 
conceptions of the realistic novel 
are necessarily misconceptions. Notable fic- 
tion has been produced by the method of 
copying actual facts. The human spectacle 
is one of extraordinary interest and variety, 



REALISM 227 

and the hand can be taught a high degree of 
skill in copying, or transcribing, those facts 
that are apparent to the senses. It can never 
be taught an absolute skill ; a man is not a 
machine — a camera raised to the nth. power 
— though he may try to make himself think 
that he is. However faithfully he may at- 
tempt to copy the facts before him, some of 
them will escape him. All unconsciously he II 
selects, modifies, adjusts; the camera has a'| 
greater fidelity, a more perfect impartiality, 
than the man ; and yet somehow the man's 
work is better than the camera's. In other 
words, the subjective element, which enters 
necessarily into every product of man's ar- 
tistic effort, however persistently the artist 
tries to exclude it, is precisely the element 
that gives the highest value to art, that gives 
it enduring significance as the record of the 
human spirit. And nevertheless, as to excel 
in some forms of athletics a man must turn 
himself into an animal for the time being 
and renounce his higher faculties, so no- 
thing is more common than to see the ar- 
tist in fiction pride himself mainly upon his 
lower gift, his manual dexterity. In pur- 
suance of this theory of his own powers, or 



228 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

a theory as to the limited province of his art, 
he may nevertheless do remarkable and val- 
uable work on the level to which he restricts 
himself. The Dutch painters may have re- 
nounced the things of the spirit, — which 
are no doubt difficult to paint, — but they 
rendered their " fat cattle and ditch water " 
with an accuracy and a sympathy that are 
worthy of high praise ; and it is in similar 
fashion that notable fiction has been pro- 
duced by the method of copying actual facts, 
or by the allied method of selecting for re- 
presentation certain facts which are uncom- 
promisingly commonplace. Both these meth- 
ods are properly enough called realistic; and 
it is also impossible to refuse that term to 
novels dealing with what we have called 
" unpleasant " phases of life. There are sen- 
sitive, highly cultivated people who cannot 
read books like " Anna Karenina " or " Ma- 
dame Bovary," but it is idle to deny that 
these great books are realistic in method and 
that they are masterpieces of art. 

The three conceptions of realism, 
sive deHni- then, are not misconceptions; but 

tion possible? , . , . .« , 

they are partial conceptions it they 
are exclusive of one another. Is it possible 



REALISM 229 

to find a definition which shall include them 
all? By taking a hint from Hawthorne's 
well known distinction between the romance 
and the novel, I think we may get this nega- 
tive definition of realism in fiction : It is 
that fiction which lacks the romantic atmos- 
phere. But it may be objected that " roman- 
tic atmosphere " is a somewhat vague term, 
and that it implies a preliminary discussion 
of romanticism. Here, then, is a more posi- 
tive, working definition : Realistic fiction is! 
that which does not shrink from the com\^ 
monplace (although art dreads the common-) 
place) or from the unpleasant (although the 
aim of art is to give pleasure) in its effort to 
depict things as they are, life as it is. 

Let me illustrate. I want, let us The llve 
say, a live eagle for a pet. Now a eagle - 
live eagle is not an altogether pleasant thing 
to have in the house. I know beforehand 
that an eagle does not dine on bonbons ; 
there will be dried blood upon its beak, and 
filth upon its feathers, and the odor of car- 
rion about its claws. A stuffed eagle would 
be for many reasons far nicer : an eagle care- 
fully skinned, deodorized, and mounted, with 
insect powder in his plumage and varnish on 



230 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

his legs, and a pair of glass eyes. A stuffed 
eagle would be more artistic, would be more 
of an ornament to the library, would give 
more pleasure to one's friends, would be 
much safer for the children. Nevertheless, 
I am perverse enough to say, " I don't want 
a stuffed eagle ; I want a live one." And I 
have a right to choose the kind of eagle I 
prefer. 

Is it not just like that in the 
the fiction matter of fiction ? I claim for my- 

one wants. -i « « i 1 1 • • 

sell, or tor any one else, the privi- 
lege of saying to a novel-writer : " I am eager 
to know more about life. Literature, you say, 
is the interpretation of life. Therefore, by 
means of your art, interpret life to me. Only 
I am tired to-day — perhaps I may have been 
for many days — of reading about life as it 
used to be in the sixteenth century, or life as 
it is going to be in the twenty-first, or life as 
some one thinks it ought to be to-day ; tell 
me, you who have the eye and the tongue, 
about life as it is, about things as they are ! " 
One may demand this from a 

The field . J . . 

of fiction novel-writer without implying tor a 

illimitable. . r ? . 

moment that realistic fiction is any 
better or greater than romantic fiction, or 



REALISM 231 

historical fiction, or Utopian fiction. The 
field of fiction is illimitable. It is a great pity 
that some American champions of realism saw 
fit to begin by sneering at their betters, or by 
running round and round Sir Walter Scott, 
barking at him. Hawthorne had as good a 
right to construct a romance, laying the scene 
in Rome, as had Mr. James to set a realistic 
novel — or at least a chapter of a realistic 
novel — in Albany, or to derive his heroine 
from Schenectady ; and if Mr. James, who 
knows the theory of fiction so much better 
than Hawthorne, fails to make " The Portrait 
of a Lady " as great a book as " The Marble 
Faun," it simply proves, not that romance is 
superior to realism, or that life in Albany is 
any less suited to the novelist's art than life 
in Rome, but simply that Nathaniel Haw- 
thorne is a better story-writer than Henry 
James. 

In spite of the wide-spread inter- 

. r ... English 

est m romantic fiction just at pre- realism: 
sent, there is every reason for the 
champion of realism to keep his temper, and 
to read the books he likes best. No national 
fiction gives more triumphant evidence than 
the English of the success of the method that 



232 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

does not shrink from the commonplace, the 
unpleasant, in its effort to render life as it is, 
things as they are. I turn at random the 
pages of the earliest master of English fic- 
tion, and come upon a passage like this : — 

" When I came to open the chests, I found several 
things of great use to me ; for example, I found in 
one a fine case of bottles, of an extraordinary kind, 
and filled with cordial waters, fine and very good ; the 
bottles held about three pints each, and were tipped 
with silver. ... I found some very good shirts, 
which were very welcome to me ; and about a dozen 
and a half of white linen handkerchiefs and colored 
neckcloths ; the former were also very welcome, being 
exceeding refreshing to wipe my face in a hot day. 
Besides this, when I came to the till in the chest, I found 
there three great bags of pieces-of-eight, which held 
about 1100 pieces in all ; and in one of them, wrapped 
up in a paper, six doubloons of gold and some small 
bars or wedges of gold ; I suppose they might all weigh 
near a pound." 

The studied commonplaceness, the minute 
enumeration, the curious particularity, are of 
the very essence of realism ; they make up 
what we call the verisimilitude of " Kobinson 
Crusoe," its life-likeness. These qualities will, 
perhaps, be even more apparent on reading 
Defoe's less known books, such as " Rox- 
ana." Here the tone is grave, frank \ the 



REALISM 233 

details circumstantial ; there is no fancy, no 
humor, no imagination, save the imagina- 
tion that is directed upon things as they 
are, physically and morally ; never was there 
a book with less of a romantic atmosphere ; 
it is an absolutely realistic exposition of the 
sober, terribly earnest, Protestant theme that 
the wages of sin is death. 

The attitude is the same, though 
the technique differs, in Richard- 
son. At the age of fifty-one he wrote his first 
novel, " Pamela," whose heroine was a ser- 
vant girl. He thought, he tells us, that if he 
wrote a story in an easy and natural manner 
— instead of a little book of f amiliar letters 
on the useful concerns of common life which 
his friends, the booksellers, had wished — he 
might possibly turn young people into a 
course of reading "different from the pomp 
and parade of romance writing, and dismiss- 
ing the improbable and the marvelous, with 
which novels generally abound, might tend to 
promote the cause of religion and virtue." 

"To promote the cause of reli- 
gion and virtue " was somewhat os- 
tentatiously announced by all the great eight- 
eenth century novelists to be the object of 



234 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

their labors. Their theory was that it could 
be accomplished by exhibiting men as they 
are, showing vice and virtue in their true light. 
" It is our business," says Fielding, " to dis- 
charge the part of a faithful historian, and 
to describe human nature as it is, not as we 
would wish it to be." " Alas," replies a critic 
like Sidney Lanier, " if you confront a man 
day by day with nothing but a picture of his 
own unworthiness, the final effect is not to 
stimulate, but to paralyze his moral energy. 
... If I had my way with those classic books, 
I would blot them from the face of the earth. 
... I can read none of them without feeling 
as if my soul had been in the rain, draggled, 
muddy, miserable." This is rather tropical 
language for a professed critic. Without 
claiming for a moment that eighteenth cen- 
tury fiction shows perfect art or a perfect 
morality, we may still assert that it is just as 
legitimate for a novelist to base his work upon 
human nature as it is, as upon human nature 
as he would wish it to be. If, following the 
first of these methods, his books paralyze our 
energy, then so much the worse for the nov- 
elist's conception of human nature. As for 
Fielding, who has to bear the brunt of the 



REALISM 235 

attack, he is quite capable of fighting his 
own battles. His readers will gladly sac- 
rifice " the sublimities " if they may be al- 
lowed to observe Partridge in the theatre, or 
" the postilion (a lad who hath been since 
transported for robbing a hen-roost) " playing 
the part of the Good Samaritan, or Sergeant 
Atkinson when he supposes himself to be 
dying and asks leave to kiss the hand of Mrs. 
Booth, or Amelia in that chapter " In which 
Amelia appears in a Light more Amiable 
than Gay." 

Such writing endures. It forms 

. . . The great 

the public taste, it is sure to be lm- succession of 

rGcilists 

itated. Even when the influence of 
Rousseau and the French Revolution brought 
new types into English fiction, — embodying 
the social aspirations of the Revolution, the 
feeling for nature in her mildest and grandest 
forms, the gloomy, Byronic individual, the ro- 
mance of the picturesque and terrible, to say 
nothing of the splendid series of historical 
novels in which the genius of Sir Walter 
Scott fascinated England and the continent, 
— England was rarely without some writer 
who did not shrink from the commonplace in 
the effort to represent life as it is. The great 



236 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

Sir Walter, whose own Scotch novels exhibit 
such admirable realism, noted in his diary, 
March 14, 1826 : — 

" Read again, and for the third time at least, Miss 
Austen's very finely written novel of Pride and Preju- 
dice. That young lady had a talent for describing the 
involvements and feelings and characters of ordinary 
life, which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with. 
The Big Bow- Wow strain I can do myself like any now 
going ; but the exquisite touch, which renders ordinary 
commonplace things and characters interesting, from 
the truth of the description and the sentiment, is denied 
to me. What a pity such a gifted creature died so 
early ! " 

Jane Austen wrote while the English ro- 
mantic movement was at its height ; then in 
the succession of the great novelists came 
Thackeray, who burlesqued the romantic 
movement and satirized it ; Dickens, with 
his vivid social sense, his glorification of lowly 
life ; George Eliot, who completed her theory 
of fiction before she wrote a line, and who 
was realist to the core. Students of the realis- 
tic method as it existed in England in the lat- 
ter half of the nineteenth century will never 
find more perfect harmony between criti- 
cal theory and creative art than is found in 
"Adam Bede" and " The Mill on the Floss." 



REALISM 237 

The key word of George Eliot's 
art is sympathy ; the key word of ism : Madame 
the French realists is detachment. 
What is called realism or " naturalism " in 
French fiction appeared shortly after 1850. 
Some look upon Balzac as its founder, and 
indeed as Balzac was by turns a little — 
nay, a great deal — of everything, he was 
now and again a capital realist. But French 
realism was beyond anything else a reaction 
against the French romanticism of the thir-' 
ties, and the book that voiced this reaction, \ 
the book that has been called the " Don 
Quixote " of romanticism — doing for it what 
Cervantes did for chivalry — is Flaubert's 
" Madame Bovary." The theme of this novel 
which has exerted such a profound influence 
upon French fiction is told in six lines at the 
end of the fifth chapter : — 

" Before her marriage, she believed herself in love, 
but as the happiness which should have resulted from 
that love did not come, she imagined that she must have 
been mistaken. And Emma endeavored to discover 
exactly what people understood in life by those words 
felicity, passion, intoxication, which had seemed to her 
so beautiful in books." 

A romantic temperament put into real dis- 
tasteful surroundings, the fine false senti- 



238 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

ment of books tested by life as it is : it is 
no wonder that with such a theme " Madame 
Bovary " is a masterpiece. Victor Hugo, De 
Vigny, and the other romanticists had prided 
themselves on their "local color/' but the 
localities were far away — in time or place : 
Flaubert took the Normandy of his own 
day, and studied its provincialism as Darwin 
studied a pigeon ; he was a passionate wor- 
shiper of style ; when he composed his book, 
he agonized over every sentence. " Madame 
Bovary " is incomparably written ; it is ab- 
solutely realistic ; its tone is cool, detached, 
brutal ; like " The Scarlet Letter," it is a piece 
of work that some one ought to do, done once 
for all. 

Followers of Flaubert's method has been fol- 
Fiauuert. lowed — of course with some modi- 
fications — by numberless pupils in the past 
thirty years : by Zola, a man of undoubted 
talent, of extraordinary imagination, who 
would have distinguished himself in any 
school of fiction, but who has offered himself 
as the champion of realism in his critical es- 
says, and in his writings has done more than 
any dozen other men to bring realism into 
disrepute ; by Daudet, who had that gift of 



REALISM 239 

sympathy which has always marked English 
realism, and with it a delicacy of perception, 
a mastery of language, a knowledge of tech- 
nique, which placed him at the head of his 
profession ; by Maupassant, who might ap- 
parently have done anything — that is, any- 
thing a pessimist can do in fiction — had 
not his brain given way : and by a host of 
lesser men, who have now broken up into 
smaller groups or followed their individual 
caprice or conviction, for plain realism has 
long since gone out of fashion in Paris. 

We must pass over the great 
names and great books that realism American 
may claim for itself in Spain and 
Italy and Kussia ; and likewise the names and 
books of the American writers who have been 
in fullest sympathy with the realistic move- 
ment. Ours has been a day of international 
influences in literature. American authors 
have been quick to learn from foreign mas- | 
ters, and better still, have been fertile enough 
to write their own books in their own way. j 
Realism has shown its fairer side in the 
American fiction of the last twenty - five 
years. It has betrayed its limitations, to be 
sure, and nowhere so markedly as in the 



240 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

novels of the men who have stood before the 
public as the typical realists ; but leaving that 
aside for the moment, how observant, honest, 
clever, sympathetic, delicate, in a word how 
artistic, has been and is to-day the realistic 
fiction of our own countrymen and country- 
women ! 

The remain- We nave examined the theory 
ing questions. f rea li sm an d have glanced, how- 
ever briefly, at its historical development. It 
remains for us to inquire : What, after all, 
has realism accomplished ? What are its 
limitations, its dangers ? Finally, is the ul- 
timate question in the art of fiction one of 
method ? 

What, then, has realism accom- 

Realism has _ ' . 

opened new pushed c In the first place, it has 
opened new fields to the artist. 
Every great literary movement has indeed 
done that. Eomanticism cried " Back to 
nature — to feeling," but what was meant 
by " nature " was romantic nature, by " feel- 
ing," romantic emotions. There is but one 
aspect of nature, one element of passion that 
is romantic, to twenty that are not ; and 
realism has insisted that all of these are at 



REALISM 241 

the disposal of the novelist. It has called 
nothing common, and, alas, very few things 
unclean. It has demolished the park wall 
that used to divide themes unforbidden from 
those forbidden to the artist ; it has advised 
him to take his brush and palette and to stray 
through the inclosure at will. It has given 
him absolute liberty to portray things as he 
finds them, and the range and freshness and 
vividness of the artist's work have shown what 
an immense stimulus there is in freedom. 
And realism has created a new _ 

Created a 

technique. Tell a man he may newtech- 

. . . niaue. 

paint anything, provided he gives 
you the sense of actuality, renders the sub- 
ject as it is, and if he have the true artist's 
passion for technical perfection, he will learn 
to paint anything. In exact correspondence 
with that marvelous technical power exhib- 
ited in modern French pictures of the re- 
alistic school, there has been developed in 
realistic fiction a fidelity, a life-likeness, a 
vividness, a touch, which are extraordinary 
and new. Tolstoi describes a man standing 
upon the steps of his club, drawing on his 
gloves ; it is nothing, and yet the picture is 
unforgettable. Hardy describes the gloves 



242 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

of a working- woman gathering turnips on an 
English upland, and the image haunts you. 
Here are a few lines exemplifying this new 
method in English fiction. Tess of the 
D'Urbervilles, desolate and forsaken, is ring- 
ing the doorbell of the empty parsonage 
where the father and mother of her husband 
had lived. 

" Nobody answered to her ringing. The effort had 
to be risen to, and made again. She rang a second 
time, and the agitation of the act, coupled with her 
weariness after the fourteen miles' walk, led her to sup- 
port herself while she waited by resting her hand on 
her hip, and her elbow against the wall of the porch. 
The wind was so drying that the ivy-leaves had become 
wizened and gray, each tapping incessantly upon its 
neighbors with a disquieting stir of her nerves. A piece 
of blood-stained paper, caught up from some meat buy- 
er's dust-heap, beat up and down the road without the 
gate ; too flimsy to rest, too heavy to fly away ; and a 
few straws kept it company." 

We may look through the whole range of 
fiction, and we shall not find until our own 
day, and among the realists, a piece of 
blood-stained paper, beating impotently in 
the wind, used artistically, as a bit of the 
setting, to intensify the desolation, the hor- 
ror, that are falling upon the spirit of the 
forsaken wife. 



EEALISM 243 

But realism has had relations to 

Realism and 

many other forces. It has been the scientific 
\ closely allied to that scientific tem- 
per which was discussed in the fourth chapter. 
Poetry and science, as we have seen, meet in 
the novel, and in many of the notable achieve- 
ments of realism there is more science than 
poetry. The novels of so indubitable an artist 
as George Eliot would lose much of their qual- 
ity if they lost the exact observation, the 
analytic power, the faculty for generalization, 
which she possessed in common with Pasteur. 
No one can doubt that certain positive bene- 
fits have accrued to realistic fiction in thus 
j linking itself with the far-reaching scientific 
spirit of our time. It has gained in precision, 
I solidity, breadth. But we must in a moment 
inquire whether it has gained, in relation to 
qualities even higher than these, through its 
association with science. 

Eealism, too, has had clearly Relationgto 
marked lines of relationship with JJJKJSJ 
the democratic spirit. We must tianity - 
touch upon these in the chapter devoted to 
the tendencies of American fiction. Further- 
more, I think it may fairly be claimed that 
the theory on which realism is based is in 



244 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

close accord with the spirit of Christianity. 
For the theory of realism teaches that the 
" every-day lif e of all" is worth something 
— if only worth describing ; it teaches the 
reality of our present experiences, the sig- 
nificance of common things. In childhood, 
perhaps, the real is too near, too obvious, to 
be attractive. We have seen big boys ; tell 
us the story of the Giants ! We have played 
with the rocking-horse; please read to us about 
Bucephalus and the Centaurs ! The far- 
away attracts us with a romantic charm ; 
anywhere rather than here is where we child- 
ishly long to be. These illusions fade as we 
grow older ; it is perhaps after a long period 
of disillusion that we turn suddenly to the 
real. Here is our world, 

. . , " Here we find 
Our destined happiness, or not at all." 

The actual grows spiritually significant. 
The world becomes intelligible, interesting. 
It is a live world — God's world. The forces 
about us are real forces ; the men and women 
we know are real personalities. Therefore 
we say to the novelist : " Show us as much 
of this most real of all worlds as you can. 
Let us see how deep is your vision ; does it 



REALISM 245 

penetrate as the Eternal Vision penetrates, is 
it as comprehensive as that, as loving as that ? " 

Said the Kussian novelist Gogol : " I have 
studied life as it really is, not in dreams of 
the imagination ; and thus I have come to a 
conception of Him who is the source of all 
life." 

It is the sentimentalist, the ro- 

, • • , i i • //xi Realism and 

manticist, who exclaims: "1 nave "tneevery- 
enough of ordinary life ; I experi- day llfe " 
ence it ad nauseam ; give me the diamond, 
the unusual, the far-away, the exceptional." 
That was exactly the cry of Emma B ovary, 
poor Emma Bovary who, in Brunetiere's 
words, is just like all of us, only a trifle too 
sensual and endowed with too little intelli- 
gence to accept the daily duty, to learn its 
charm and its latent poetry. The value of 
" the every-day life " to the more thoughtful 
type of mind has been well expressed by 
Kichard Holt Hutton in his essay on Shel- 
ley : — 

" Poets, and artists, and thinkers, and theologians, 
who hunger after reality, hold, we suppose, that the 
actual combination of qualities and substances and 
personal influences as God has made them, contains 
something much better worth knowing and imagining 
accurately, than any recast they could effect of their 



; 



246 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

own. They believe in the infinite significance of actual 
ties. And those who feel this, as all realists do usu- 
ally feel it, must cherish a certain spirit of faithful 
tenacity at the bottom of their minds, a respect for the 
mere fact of existence, a wish to see good reason before 
they separate things joined together by nature, and 
perhaps, they will think, by divine law ; a disposition 
to cling to the details of experience, as having at least 
a presumptive sacredness ; nay, they feel even a higher 
love for such beauty as is presented to them in the 
real universe, than for any which is got by the dissolv- 
ing and recomposing power of their own eclectic ideal- 
ism." Literary Essays, p. 174. 

Now the great realists in fic- 
canoe of the tion take the e very-day life of all ; 
from the material furnished by the 
average man in the ordinary situation they 
form their work of art. They reveal — at 
their best moments — the reality of things ; 
that is, the spiritual and enduring side of 
things, the divine in the human, God's world 
existing in and through our world. It is 
in this sense that Christianity is on the side 
of realism, because Christianity deepens our 
! sense of the actual, and of the eternal signifi- 
cance of the Here and Now, of the infi- 
nite potentialities of character. When we 
have learned to look at men and women as 
they are, the world as it is, to see in it some- 



REALISM 247 

thing of perennial freshness and suggestive- 
ness, to feel it beating with the Infinite Heart, 
then the writer of fiction who can interpret 
human life to us most closely, most sympa- 
thetically, bring it to us most intimately, is 
the realist. But if the actual world is en- 
nuyeux to us, then we should logically take 
refuge in another sort of fiction, — in the 
stories of other times and other places, of 
other orders of beings, acting under condi- 
tions different from our own. If the sunlight, 
the clear, frank sunlight, is too strong for 
us, or too colorless, let us by all means spread 
a purple awning, and diffuse a romantic at- 
mosphere of our own. 

In what has just been written, I Limitations 
have made the very highest claim ofreaUsnL 
for the possibilities of realistic art. Yet it 
is easy to see the limitations of realism. The 
realist says : " I paint things as they are, the 
world as it is ; " but by this he means neces- 
sarily things as they are to him, the world as 
it is to him. However objective he strives 
to be, he looks out upon the world through 
the lens of his own personality. His art x is 
conditioned upon his vision, his physical 



248 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

vision, his psychical vision. In the very 
nature of the case, that vision is more or less 
contracted, blurred. What he takes for 
reality may not be reality. There is but one 
real world, and that is God's world. The 
novelist's world, depend upon it, will be but 
an imperfect copy ; what he calls the real 
world will be his own world, not God's world, 
but a Turgenieff world, a Thomas Hardy 
world, a Miss Wilkins world. Alas ! what 
distortion ! what pitiful limitation ! A real- 
ist with well-nigh perfect physical vision 
may have what the brain specialists call psy- 
chic blindness, — inability to perceive the 
meaning of the visual impression. He may 
be a pure materialist, seeing only the animal 
side of life, devoting great talents to the 
analysis of wrath and love as functions of the 
bodily organism. He may steadfastly ignore 
those hopes and aspirations that reach out 
beyond the confines of mortality, that lay 
hold upon the world to come. 

And realism has its dangers^ as 
lackofsym- well as its limitations. The realist 
must represent actualities ; he must 
study them objectively ; he must be an ob- 
server ; and nothing is easier than for him 



REALISM 249 



to learn to observe without sympathy. This 
is, as the reader may remember, what Haw- 
thorne dreaded ; it is the theme of his " Ethan 
Brand." It is the " detachment^' which has 
been one of the catchwords of French real- 
ism, and which explains why so much of the 
fiction of the last generation in France, with 
all its wonderful qualities, has nevertheless 
been so pitiless. 

Another danger for realism lies 
in that very technical excellence ana nothing 
which the French writers have 
brought to such perfection. To the vivid 
rendering of the appearances of things, other 
qualities equally important to artistic work 
of a high rank have been sacrificed. Tech- 
nique and nothing back of it is a besetting 
foe to the realist. It is so much easier to 
start with painting the surface, to be content 
with outdoing one's rivals in cleverness, in 
tricks of the brush, in " impressionism." But 
the cleverest record of fact, the most sensitive 
rendering of atmosphere, fails, by itself, to 
make fiction vital. The lack of imagination! 
in some of those books whose technical work-!, 
manship seems beyond praise is startling. 
By imagination I do not mean a journey into 



250 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

cloudland, but the power of seeing real things 
imaginatively. One of the Goncourt brothers 
puts forth this request in a preface to a 
novel : — 

" I want to write a novel which shall be the study 
of a young girl, — a novel founded on human docu- 
ments. I find that books about women, written by 
men, lack feminine collaboration. The impressions of 
a little girl, confidences as to her feelings at the time 
of confirmation, her sensations when she first goes into 
society, the unveiling of the most delicate emotions, — 
in a word, all the unknown femininity at the depths of 
a woman, these are what I need. And I ask my femi- 
nine readers, in those unoccupied hours, when the past, 
in its gloom or happiness, rises before them, to write 
these thoughts or memories down for me, to send them 
to me anonymously at the address of my publisher." 

Comment upon the delicacy of this propo- 
sition is quite needless, but did ever a pro- 
fessed artist make a more pitiful confession 
of his own imaginative sterility? To put 
yourself in another person's place is the first 
law of the novelist's creative imagination ; 
this disciple of Flaubert stretches forth his 
hands impotently for the other person's docu- 
ments. 

Facts not I* * s j us * here that the alliance 

enough. Q £ realis^with the scientific spirit, 



REALISM 251 

which, as we have seen, has given fiction 
precision, solidity, breadth, has nevertheless 
with some schools of fiction wrought irrepa- 
rable mischief. The scientific temper, un- 
transmuted by artistic feeling, has never been 
of value in any of the fine arts ; the applica- 
tion of scientific methods toliction has time 
and again crowded the creative imagination 
off the field to make room for tEe documents. 
There is of course an endless variety in na- 
ture and in human nature, but an endless 
succession of realists, working merely by sci- 
entifically accurate observation and record, 
can never produce a great novel any more 
than an endless succession of photographers 
can produce a great picture. They can give 
us a marvelous array of facts, but fact is not / 
fiction. Science cares for facts, art, in the / 
high sense, for facts only as they reveal truths ; 
and unless the writer of fiction uses facts to 
explain truths, his work is like the dead iron 
before it is carbonized into steel, like prose 
uncrystallized into poetry. 

The last danger that the realist 
runs is perhaps the most obvious, if 
it be not the worst. It is the danger, already 
alluded to in a previous chapter, of represent- 



252 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

ing the body rather than the mind, the physi- 
ological to the exclusion of the psychological. 
A reviewer in the " New York Evening Post " 
has put this sharply, but not unjustly. 

" It is only fair to say that what we have called ani- 
malism others pronounce wonderful realism. We use 
the word animalism for the sake of clearness, to denote 
a species of realism which deals with man considered 
as an animal, capable of hunger, thirst, lust, cruelty, 
vanity, fear, sloth, predacity, greed, and other passions 
and appetites that make him kin to the brutes, but 
which neglects, so far as possible, any higher qualities 
which distinguish him from his four-footed relatives, 
such as humor, thought, reason, aspiration, affection, 
morality, and religion. Real life is full of the contrasts 
between these conflicting tendencies, but the object of 
the animalistic school seems always to make a study of 
the genus homo which shall recall the menagerie at 
feeding-time rather than human society." 

There is plenty of animalism in human so- 
ciety, as everybody knows ; but this does not 
justify a man of talent in writing as if there 
were nothing but animalism. The novelists 
who have followed their morbid-minded lead- 
ers over the park wall, in search of material 
which has hitherto been considered too sacred 
or too horrible to be used by fiction, have 
been so severely taken to task for it by the 
best critics, that we may content ourselves 



REALISM 253 

with a single remark. Crossing the park 
wall leaves a man no better painter than he 
was before. He may sit outside, with brushes 
and colors and palette, and sigh for the for- 
bidden subjects. He may then cry, 

" Down with Reticence, down with Reverence — forward " — 

and follow his indefatigable leader across the 
broken wall ; he may select his forbidden fruit 
and begin to paint it. Very well ; he is just 
the same painter as ever : no more true of eye, 
no more skillful of hand ; indeed, since the 
man must often cross the barrier between de- 
cency and indecency with the artist, the hand 
may not be so steady, nor the eye so clear. 
What then is gained ? The picture, the book, 
sells to a debased public, which it helps still 
further to debase ; but to a sensitive writer 
of fiction there can scarcely be a worse In- 
ferno than the thought that a book has sold 
at the expense of the artistic capacity of the 
writer himself. 

No more powerful protest against 

. . i-i , The testt- 

this naturalism has yet appeared monyof 

Valdes. 

than the one uttered by the Span- 
ish novelist Valdes in the preface to his 
"Sister St. Sulpice:" — 



254 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

"I believe firmly with the naturalist writers that 
man represents on this planet the ultimate phase of ani- 
mal evolution, and that on this supposition the study of 
his animal instincts and passions is interesting, and ex- 
plains a great number of his actions. But this study 
has for me only a historic value, because if man pro- 
ceeds directly from animality, every day he goes far- 
ther and farther away from it, and this and nothing else 
is the basis of our own progress. We come surely from 
the instinctive, the unconscious, the necessary, but we 
are going forward toward the rational, the conscious, 
and the free. Therefore the study of all that refers to 
the rational, free, and conscious mind as the explanation 
of a great proportion of human acts, the only noble and 
worthy ones, is far superior to the first. It is more 
interesting to study man as man than as an animal, al- 
though the naturalist school thinks otherwise. ... In 
order that there should be beauty in man, it is neces- 
sary that he show himself as man, and not as brute." 

The ban*- It i s *° sucn causes that we must 

reansmln assign the bankruptcy of realism in 
France. France. It has ventured as far 

into forbidden territory as any fiction is ever 
likely to go, and it has brought back pictures 
that defile the imagination and sicken the 
heart. It has made disreputable an artistic 
method which in other countries, and in the 
hands of many a French writer, has served 
great ends. The limits have long since been 
reached, and before the close of the nine- 



REALISM 255 

teenth century the Paris critics began coolly 
to balance the assets and liabilities of realism, 
as with the ledgers of a wrecked concern. 

Yet in England and America, Thefutureof 
and indeed everywhere outside this reaUsm - 
eddy in a single European city, the currents of 
realism have by no means spent their force. 
Kealism has wrought itself too thoroughly 
into the picture of the modern world, it is too 
significant a movement, to allow any doubt 
as to the permanence of its influence. It is 
true that in the opening years of the twen- 
tieth century we Americans are witnessing a 
sort of " Eomantic Kevival," whose devotees 
are complaisant toward any books that excite 
and entertain them. In the face of this un- 
appeasable and perfectly legitimate thirst for 
romance, has the realistic method vitality 
enough to hold its own ? 

In art, no method, of itself, has 
vitality; it is men that have vitality, of men, not 
The only promise of permanent 
life for a novel is in the creative imagination 
of the writer. Everything else has been 
proved transient. No " ism " can save a 
book beyond an hour. The ultimate ques- 
tion in the art of fiction, therefore, is not 



256 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

i 

what is the method of to-day, of the future ; it 
is, what are the men who are to be back of the 
method ? In place, therefore, of speculating 
as to the future of realism, let us turn to the 
future realist, and assert what manner of man 
he must be if realism is to be credited with 
any coming triumphs. The assertion may 
be made very positively, it seems to me, and 
in very simple terms. 

" Guy de Maupassant sees," said 

Seeing, feel- J . r / 

ing, and a recent magazine writer, " Pierre 

thinking. _. P1 -r» i t» i • i *> 

Loti feels, Paul Bourget thinks. 
Each of these admirable but highly specialized 
artists represents a quality that is essential to 
the greatest writers of fiction. How clearly 
Maupassant sees, how sensitively Pierre Loti 
feels, how delicate and grave is the thinking 
of Bourget ! The organization, let us say, is 
perfect. But what does this one see, and that 
one feel, and the other one think ? Does 
Maupassant bring to us nothing more than 
the pitilessness of life, Loti the pathos of life, 
Bourget a sense of the confusion of life ? We 
have a right to demand of the future novelist 
that he shall see and feel and think. But he 
shall see things as they are, the world as it 
is ; God's world. He shall feel in the men 



REALISM 257 

and women around him the pulsation of the 
Infinite Heart. He shall think nobly, be- 
cause truly. And his shall be such mastery of 
his material that no technical resource shall 
be unknown to him, no feat of creative im- 
agination too hard for him ; and by virtue of 
that mastery he shall make us see and feel 
and think, so that when we read his book it 
may be with the joy of deeper insight and 
quicker sympathy and a new hold on truth. 
Truth shall be the key word of his art, and 
the truth that he reveals shall be seen of us 
as beauty. 

When that man comes, I should call him a 
realist : but he is welcome to call himself an 
idealist, a romanticist, or any other name he 
likes. And while we are waiting, we can 
turn once more the pages of " Amelia " and 
" Henry Esmond " and " Adam Bede." 



CHAPTER X 

ROMANTICISM 

" I cannot get on with Books about the Daily Life which I 
find, rather insufferable in practice about me. I never could 
read Miss Austen, nor (later) the famous George Eliot. Give 
me People, Places, and Things which I don't and can't see ; 
Antiquaries, Jeanie Deans, Dalgettys, etc. ... As to Thack- 
eray's, they are terrible ; I really look at them on the shelf and 
am half afraid to touch them. He, you know, could go deeper 
into the Springs of Common Action than these Ladies ; wonder- 
ful he is, but not Delightful, which one thirsts for as one gets 
old and dry." 

Edward FitzGerald to S. Laurence, December 30, 1875. 

" The discussion is quite vain, into which so many fishermen 
have gone, on the question whether the artificial fly is to be 
used on the imitation theory. Trout take some flies because 
they resemble the real fly on which they feed. They take 
other flies for no such reason. And in this they are like men." 
W. C. Peime, I Go A-Fishing. 

its various In the discussion of romanticism, 

meanings. ag £ rea li sm? one i s fi rs t f all con- 
fronted by the fact that the word is capable 
of many varieties of meaning. Its signifi- 
cance shifts as the critic passes from one 
country, one generation, one group of men, 
to another. Fortunately for the student of 



ROMANTICISM 259 

literature, however, there have been many 
brilliant and scholarly treatises upon the char- 
acter and history of romanticism. Some of 
the most important books and articles upon 
the subject are mentioned in the bibliography 
for the present chapter in the Appendix. It 
will be sufficient for our present purpose to ex- 
plain the more general meanings which have 
been attached to the word, and to indicate 
briefly the role which romanticism has played 
in various national literatures. We can then 
pass to the discussion of romanticism in fic- 
tion, and endeavor to see what qualities it im- 
plies in the writer, the book, and the public. 

One of the most famous discus- 
sions of romanticism is to be found 
in Hegel's " ^Esthetics." He points out that 
in the evolution of art there are three phases 
which characterize different stages of its de- 
velopment. The first of these phases is the 
symbolic, in which, according to Hegel, the 
material element overmasters the spiritual 
element. Most architecture may be said to 
remain permanently in this symbolic stage. 
Next comes the classic phase, where the 
material and spiritual elements are in equi- 
librium. This phase is best represented by 



260 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

sculpture. Finally comes the romantic phase, 
where the spiritual element predominates over 
the material,. and which is best exemplified 
by the arts of music, painting, and poetry. 
Hegel points out, furthermore, that these 
three phases may be illustrated in the history 
of any one art. In sculpture, for instance, 
although as a whole it is predominantly 
classic, there may be traced distinctively sym- 
bolic, classic, and romantic periods. While 
later critics have shown that this analysis of 
Hegel's must be subjected to many modifi- 
cations, it remains an extremely suggestive 
one, and affords a convenient starting point 
for our own discussion. 
"Classic" Every educated person is more 

mantle'"" or ^ ess distinctly aware of certain 
qualities. qualities which, when evidenced in 
a work of art, are by common consent called 
" classic." These classic qualities may be 
indicated by terms like " purity of feeling," 
" reserve," " perfection of form." It is true 
that these qualities are often accompanied by 
such defects as coldness and formalism. 
There are likewise certain " romantic " quali- 
ties suggested by the very word itself ; for in- 
stance, freedom, warmth, expressiveness. In 



ROMANTICISM 261 

attaining these qualities the artist frequently 
runs the risk of falling into lawlessness, into 
the caprices of a disordered imagination. 
What seems significant to him may be vague 
or even meaningless to us ; for the romantic 
artist, generally speaking, deals more with 
the emotional element than with the purely 
intellectual factors that enter into the work 
of art. 

But, however one may choose to 

_ 7 _ . _ J . Illustrations, 

define classic and romantic charac- 
teristics, it is apparent that in all the arts it is 
possible to point out specific objects which 
are characterized by one or the other group 
of qualities already mentioned. Thus the 
Parthenon is classic ; Cologne Cathedral ro- 
mantic ; the Apollo Belvedere classic ; Ro- 
din's " Apollo " romantic ; the " Antigone " 
of Sophocles classic ; " A Midsummer Night's 
Dream " of Shakespeare romantic ; Beetho- 
ven's music — in its general features at least 
— classic ; Chopin's romantic. However 
widely critics may be inclined to differ in 
their assessment of the value of such repre- 
sentative works of art as those just named, 
they would agree in the general classification 
here given. We find, then, that it is possi- 



262 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

ble to apply to literature, as well as to the 
other arts of expression, the term romantic. 
Let us try to see still more precisely what 
the word connotes. 

Romantic The last century is rich in ex- 

S°mwature : amples of romantic movements in 
England. literature. In England, Germany, 
and France there have been sharply defined 
romantic periods, illuminated by great names 
and producing memorable works. These 
periods have had their special characteristics, 
their peculiar modes of development and 
channels of expression. Yet underneath all 
these differences it is easy to see that common 
factors have been at work. In England, for 
instance, we can trace far back in the eight- 
eenth century the beginnings of the roman- 
tic temper. Professor Beers 1 and Professor 
Phelps 2 have devoted interesting chapters to 
the first impulses, feeble and imitative as these 
were, to break away from the frigid conven- 
tions into which the great Augustan tradi- 

1 A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth 
Century. By H. A. Beers. New York : Henry Holt, 1899. 
See also A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth 
Century. By the same author. New York : Holt, 1901. 

2 The Beginnings of the English Romantic Movement. By 
W. L. Phelps. Boston : Ginn, 1893. 



ROMANTICISM 263 

tions had degenerated. The English romantic 
movement came to its perfect flowering in 
snch men as Coleridge and Keats, Scott, 
Byron, and Shelley. Curious as were the 
differences that divided the leading English 
romanticists, making many of them bitter 
personal enemies, these men all held to certain 
tenets of a common creed. Like true children 
of Kousseau, they cried, " Back to nature," 
emphasizing particularly the picturesque and 
terrible aspects of natural scenery. But they 
cried also, " Back to simple, elemental feel- 
ing." From this point of view, two such 
apparently diverse poems as Wordsworth's 
" We are Seven " and Byron's " The Cor- 
sair " are in fundamental accord. And the 
English romanticists insisted, and with in- 
creasing fervor as the romantic movement 
drew toward its close, " Let us go back to 
history, to the manners and institutions of 
our forefathers." Yet curiously enough, 
though all the English romanticists were 
strongly interested in politics, the romantic 
movement in Great Britain left politics and 
religion practically untouched. 

The German romantic movement, 
. . . , In Germany. 

however, was, as many critics nave 



264 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

pointed out, a Catholic renaissance. It 
was a revolt against the classic paganism of 
Goethe, Lessing, Winckelmann, and Schiller. 
It idolized Roman countries, such as Italy ; 
the authors of southern Europe, such as 
Calderon. In such representative German 
romanticists as Tieck, the Schlegel brothers, 
and Novalis, there is everywhere to be found 
a love of warmth and color, the worship of 
enthusiasm, the desire to become like little 
children in sensitiveness to impressions, in 
naivete of emotion. Professor Francke * has 
pointed out the three phases through which 
the German romantic movement swiftly ran 
its course : first, that of individual caprice ; 
second, fantastic sensualism ; and third, a 
flight into the land of the supernatural and 
miraculous. In politics, as it is scarcely 
necessary to say, the German romantic move- 
ment was reactionary. It strengthened the 
hands of absolutism in government as in 
religion. 

In France, on the other hand, 
the romantic movement was pagan 
and republican. Instead of worshiping the 

1 Publications of the Modem Language Association. New- 
series, Vol. Ill, No. 1. 



In France 



ROMANTICISM 265 

authors of southern Europe, it was most 
strongly influenced by such men as Scott, 
Byron, and Shakespeare. That is to say, it 
was a German, a gothic romanticism, grafted 
upon the French stock. The French writers 
who came in the generation of the thirties, 
such as Victor Hugo, DeVigny, Musset, 
George Sand, and Balzac, rescued the French 
language from the classic formalism into 
which it was in danger of declining. They 
produced a wonderful literature, glowing with 
colors like those of the great romantic paint- 
ers Delacroix and Delaroche, and echoing 
with fantastic music like that of Berlioz and 
Chopin. They performed a great patriotic 
service likewise, and in their common worship 
of art they sustained the French tradition of 
intelligent, capable workmanship. Such ro- 
mantic literature as this is sure to have in its 
own day and generation an immense vogue. 
Whether it meets the literary canons of suc- 
ceeding generations, whether it contains in 
itself those elements which may one day be 
recognized as classic, is quite another matter. 
How slender, how colorless a literary product 
seems Goldsmith's " The Vicar of Wakefield " 
when compared with Victor Hugo's " Les 



26G A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

Miserables " ! And yet, as the years go by, 
it does not seem hazardous to assert that 
" The Yicar of Wakefield " possesses certain 
qualities which are likely to insure for it a 
more enduring life than was imparted to 
" Les Miserables " by the splendid exuber- 
ance, the affluent fancy, the poignant tragic 
power of the great Frenchman. 

It is only through wide acquaint- 

Critical . . J P . * . 

terms are ance with the books written during 
one or all of these representatively 
romantic periods that one becomes gradually 
aware of the elasticity of meaning, as well as 
the persistent drift of meaning, that abides 
in the term " romanticism." One perceives 
the justice of some of the famous definitions 
which make it synonymous with "aspiration," 
"mystery," "the spirit of Christianity," "the 
emancipation of the ego," " liberalism in 
literature," " the renaissance of wonder," 
and " strangeness in beauty, rather than 
order in beauty." Yet many of these defi- 
nitions reveal their inadequacy the moment 
they are applied to other phases of romanti- 
cism than the particular one which has 
evoked the definition. Romantic material 
may be treated with the spirit of classicism ; 



ROMANTICISM 267 

and conversely the romantic method may be 
applied to subjects that are severely classical. 
And there is a true and a false romanticism, 
just as there is a true and a false classicism. 
Professor Beers, in the preface to his " English 
Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century," re- 
affirms his right to use romanticism as synony- 
mous with " medievalism," making it, in other 
words, the reproduction in modern art or liter- 
ature of the life or thought of the middle ages. 
The working value of this definition is indis- 
putable, although it needs, perhaps, the fur- 
ther explanation of medievalism which is 
given in these words of Walter Pater : — 

" The essential elements, then, of the romantic spirit 
are curiosity and the love of beauty ; and it is only as 
an illustration of these qualities that it seeks the Mid- 
dle Age, because, in the overcharged atmosphere of 
the Middle Age, there are unworked sources of roman- 
tic effect, of a strange beauty, to be won, by strong 
imagination, out of things unlikely or remote." 1 

There is another passage in this essay of 
Pater's which becomes particularly suggestive 
as one approaches the study of romanticism 
in fiction : — 

"There are the born classicists who start with form, 
to whose minds the comeliness of the old, immemorial, 
1 Appreciations, p. 261. 



268 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

well-recognized types in art and literature have re- 
vealed themselves impressively ; who will entertain 
no matter which will not go easily and flexibly into 
them ; whose work aspires only to be a variation upon, 
or study from the older masters. ' 'T is art's decline, 
my son ! ' they are always saying to the progressive 
element in their own generation ; to those who care for 
that which in fifty years' time every one will be caring 
for. On the other hand there are the born romanti- 
cists, who start with an original, untried matter, still in 
fusion ; who conceive this vividly, and hold by it as 
the essence of their work ; who, by the very vividness 
and heat of their conception, purge away, sooner or 
later, all that is not organically appropriate to it, till 
the whole effect adjusts itself in clear, orderly, propor- 
tionate form ; which form, after a very little time, be- 
comes classical in its turn. The romantic or classical 
character of a picture, a poem, a literary work, de- 
pends then on the balance of certain qualities in it ; 
and in this sense, a very real distinction may be drawn 
between good classical and good romantic work. But 
all critical terms are relative ; and there is at least a 
valuable suggestion in that theory of Stendhal's, that 
all good art was romantic in its day." x 

Romanticism Bearing in mind, therefore, that 
inaction. « a u critical terms are relative," let 
us turn more definitely to the field of fiction. 
What is meant by romantic fiction, as com- 
pared with realistic and other types ? The 
definition of " romance " given in the Cen- 
tury Dictionary will be helpful : — 

1 Appreciations, p. 271. 



ROMANTICISM 269 

" A tale in verse in one of the Romance dialects, as 
early French or Provengal. A popular epic. A ficti- 
tious story of heroic, marvelous, or supernatural inci- 
dents derived from history or legend. A tale or novel 
dealing not so much \_sic~\ with real and familiar life as 
with extraordinary and often extravagant adventures 
(' Don Quixote ') ; with rapid and violent changes in 
scene and fortunes (' Count of Monte Cristo ') ; with 
mysterious and supernatural events (' Dr. Jekyll and 
Mr. Hyde ') ; or with morbid idiosyncrasies of tem- 
perament (' Caleb Williams ') ; or picturing imaginary 
conditions of society influenced by imaginary charac- 
ters (Fouqu^'s ' Undine ')." 

The reader will note that I have taken the 
liberty of italicising the words " not so much." 
We are concerned with a question of relative 
emphasis. According to the relative amount 
of stress which it lays upon the extraordinary, 
the mysterious, the imaginary, does the ro- 
mance differ from the novel. What is the 
reason for this difference in emphasis ? 

For answer we must look to the 

. _ ii, The mood of 

writer or romance, and endeavor to the romantic 
see why he turns away from the 
common facts of experience. It is a question 
of mood. The romantic writer, as such, is 
dissatisfied with the artistic material furnished 
by e very-day life. This is not saying that, 
as a man, he is dissatisfied with life ; that he 



270 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

is a pessimist or a cynic. Poe was this, and 
Hawthorne was not, although both were 
romanticists. It is simply saying that when 
he wishes to construct a story, the romanti- 
cist desires to weave it out of different ma- 
terial from that which his every-day experi- 
ence offers. In the words of Don Quixote's 
niece, he wants " better bread than wheaten." 
He seeks not the violet that grows in com- 
mon fields, but some mysterious " blue 
flower," which forever eludes him. He por- 
trays, not some woman whom he has met that 
morning on the street, but a woman of his 
dreams. The images, the sounds that haunt 
his imagination, are not those of wearisome, 
reiterated reality. And it should be needless 
to say that all this is perfectly legitimate, 
that it is wholly in keeping with one mode 
of the artistic temperament. 
The romantic I* is to this characteristic of the 
atmosphere. roman ti c writer that is due what we 
call the " atmosphere " of romantic works of 
fiction. No better description of it can be 
given than that which was penned by one of 
the most perfect masters of it — Nathaniel 
Hawthorne — in the well known preface to 
" The House of the Seven Gables." 



ROMANTICISM 271 

" When a writer calls his work a Romance, it need 
hardly be observed that he wishes to claim a certain 
latitude, both as to its fashion and material, which he 
would not have felt himself entitled to assume had he 
professed to be writing a Novel. The latter form of 
composition is presumed to aim at a very minute fidel- 
ity, not merely to the possible, but to the probable and 
ordinary course of man's experience. The former — 
while as a work of art, it must rigidly subject itself to 
laws, and while it sins unpardonably so far as it may 
swerve aside from the truth of the human heart — has 
fairly a right to present that truth under circumstances, 
to a great extent, of the writer's own choosing or crea- 
tion. If he think fit, also, he may so manage his 
atmospherical medium as to bring out or mellow the 
lights and deepen and enrich the shadows of the pic- 
ture. He will be wise, no doubt, to make a very mod- 
erate use of the privileges here stated, and, especially, 
to mingle the Marvellous rather as a slight, delicate, 
and evanescent flavor than as any portion of the actual 
substance of the dish offered to the public. He can 
hardly be said, however, to commit a literary crime 
even if he disregard this caution. 

" In the present work, the author has proposed to 
himself — but with what success, fortunately, it is not 
for him to judge — to keep undeviatingly within his im- 
munities. The point of view in which this tale comes 
under the Romantic definition lies in the attempt to 
connect a bygone time with the very present that is 
flitting away from us. It is a legend prolonging it- 
self, from an epoch now gray in the distance, down 
into our own broad daylight, and bringing along with 
it some of its legendary mist, which the reader, accord- 



272 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

ing to his pleasure, may either disregard, or allow it to 
float almost imperceptibly about the characters and 
events for the sake of a picturesque effect." 

It is needless to say that, in books like 
" The House of the Seven Gables/' " The 
Scarlet Letter/ ' or " The Marble Faun/' the 
reader sees the personages and events of the 
story through the warm or sombre romantic 
medium, — the special atmosphere which the 
author has created for him. In the most suc- 
cessful stories of Mr. Howells, on the other 
hand, the atmosphere is precisely that of Bos- 
ton or New York during the year or decade 
described in the story. The realist has suc- 
ceeded with singular skill in making a verti- 
cal sunlight strike upon his pages. To turn 
from such novels as these to the romances of 
Hawthorne is to pass from the clear, frank 
sunlight of high noon into the mist of dawn, 
the glow of the sunset, the wavering outlines 
of moonlight. Which atmosphere is more 
attractive depends upon the temperament, 
the momentary mood, the literary training of 
the individual reader. It is foolish to en- 
deavor to prove that one type of book — as a 
type — is better than the other. All that we 
are now concerned to see is that there is a 



ROMANTICISM 273 

difference ; that the presence or absence of 
the romantic atmosphere largely determines 
the nature of a work of fiction. 

How is this atmosphere to be se- R emo teness 
cured ? The writer frequently com- of time ' 
passes it by the simple expedient of placing 
his story in a remote period, where the very 
distance enhances the atmospheric effect. Mr. 
Crawford's " Zoroaster " will serve to illus- 
trate this type of romantic novel. The mere 
remoteness in time from our own day and 
generation is sufficient to give such a romance 
an appeal to the historic imagination. In- 
deed, almost all historical fiction is in this 
sense of the word romantic fiction. Now 
and again surprising efforts have been made, 
as in the Egyptian novels of George Ebers, 
to paint the personages and the scenes of re- 
mote antiquity with all the detailed accuracy 
of a chronicle of the present day. Such 
experiments in applying the realistic method 
to the depiction of historical personages and 
events have commonly failed, however, to im- 
part either any sense of reality or any roman- 
tic charm. It is surely wiser to follow the 
course of the great writers of historical ro- 
mance in avoiding a too curious consideration 



274 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

of exact details. " Quentin Durward " and 
" The Talisman " are all wrong archaeologi- 
cally, yet they are triumphs of fiction-writing 
none the less. 

strangeness There is, too, a romanticism which 
of scene. owes its atmosphere to strangeness 
of place rather than remoteness of time. We 
know how the imaginations of Southey and 
Coleridge were affected by the sound of the 
syllables in the word Susquehanna, upon the 
banks of which unvisited, romantic stream 
they were desirous of founding a Utopian 
colony. That element of our human nature 
which constantly tempts us to belittle what 
is actually present, and to idealize and glo- 
rify what is beyond the field of our own vi- 
sion, is constantly playing into the hands of 
the romance-writer. Mr. Crawford's " Mr. 
Isaacs/' for instance, seems, to one reading 
the story in England or America, to move in 
a sort of fairyland. But the traveler familiar 
with the East is likely to have met the actual 
Mr. Isaacs in his jewelry shop in Delhi, and 
to smile at the mere romance of place which 
has so moved the imagination of the untrav- 
eled reader. 



ROMANTICISM 275 

But remoteness of time and place 

The atmos- 

do not contribute more perfectly to phere 



the creation of romantic atmosphere 
than do quite modern and present circum- 
stances, provided these are viewed through 
an atmosphere of intense emotion. Let pas- 
sion enter, let fury or pathos or tragedy brood 
over the personages of a story, and it mat- 
ters little how sordid and prosaic the world 
in which the characters move. We have 
used Mr. Crawford's " Zoroaster " and " Mr. 
Isaacs " to exemplify certain types of roman- 
tic atmosphere. There is a chapter of his 
" Casa Braccio" where he describes the in- 
terior of an Italian restaurant in a fashion 
that would do credit to any realistic writer, 
but the vulgar interior is flooded with the 
intense light of passion and crime. The 
familiar outlines, the scents and odors and 
sights of the place are filled, as it were, by 
the mist of anguish and terror. To be able 
to accomplish such a feat as this is to prove 
one's self a master of the methods of romance. 



We have been looking at the 

° Romantic 

writer of romances and at those sentiment in 

.... . the public. 

qualities in his books which make 



276 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

it possible for them to convey an atmosphere 
of romantic sentiment. This sentiment would 
be ineffectual, however, if it were not for the 
corresponding", the reciprocal, sentiment on 
the part of the public itself. The public is 
never more like a healthy child than in its 
thirst for the exceptional and the exotic. I 
have chosen as one of the mottoes for this 
chapter the verdict of a veteran fisherman, 
who declares that " trout take some flies be- 
cause they resemble the real fly on which they 
feed. They take other flies for no such rea- 
son. And in this they are like men." In 
truth, we all like, at certain seasons, the 
strange, bright-colored creations of a novel- 
ist's fancy, and the more vividly they differ 
from the sober colors of reality the greater 
the pleasure they afford, 
m youth and To y outh > colored as it is with 
age. romantic hues of its own devising, 

no fiction seems so improbable as to forbid 
acceptance. Old age, disillusionized by many 
adventures, by many voyages into far-off 
seas, loves to cheat itself once more with the 
swiftly spun web of romantic delusion. The 
first motto for the present chapter is a pas- 
sage from one of the letters of Edward Fitz- 



ROMANTICISM 277 

Gerald regarding the novels of Thackeray. 
It was written in December, 1875, when Fitz- 
Gerald felt himself " old and dry/' and in no 
mood for the fiction that deals with human 
life in its profounder aspects. Yet only three 
years before he was writing about Disraeli's 
romantic novel " Lothair : " — 

" Altogether the Book is like a pleasant Magic Lan- 
tern : when it is over I shall forget it : and shall want 
to return to what I do not forget ; some of Thackeray's 
monumental Figures of ' pauvre et triste Humanity,' 
as Old Napoleon called it : Humanity in its depths, 
not in its superficial Appearances." 

There could scarcely be a better illustra- 
tion of the shifting moods of a sympathetic, 
sensitive reader than that given by these 
two passages from FitzGerald's letters. 

All of us, in certain hours of A literature 
weariness, of relaxation from the ofevasion - 
daily toil, of twilight dreaming, desire to 
forget the disappointments of actual experi- 
ence. Romantic fiction furnishes a literature 
of evasion. It allows us to escape from 
the complications, the fret, the strain of liv- 
ing. In such hours one is willing to leave 
the reading of realistic fiction to the strong, 
the courageous persons who have no fear of 



278 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

the facts of life ; who prefer to face them, 
with all their terrible implications. It is 
enough for the rest of us, for the time being, 
at least, to wander away into some enchanted 
land " far from this our war." 

It is easy to understand, there- 

The"neo- / 

romantic tore, now the modern " neo-roman- 

movement." . ,, , 

tic movement has arisen as a re- 
action against realism. It is impossible to 
analyze exactly these changes in the reading 
public's temper. They are as unaccountable, 
apparently as whimsical, as the variations in 
any other human appetite. But there are 
few sympathetic readers of modern English 
fiction who do not feel grateful for the books 
written by the younger men who, with Steven- 
son as their gallant leader, came into promi- 
nence during the last twenty years of the 
nineteenth century. Few or none of these 
men have revealed themselves as great per- 
sonalities seriously engaged in interpreting 
the more vital aspects of human experience. 
Sometimes one is even inclined to doubt 
whether most of them have very much to 
say. But they have at least performed the 
useful service of giving delight to their con- 
temporaries. Many of them have been mas- 



ROMANTICISM 279 

ters of the story-telling art ; they have learned 
brevity of description, brilliancy of narrative, 
ready invention of situations and events. 
Their task, after all, is far less difficult than 
that of the author of great realistic fiction. 
The Spanish novelist Valdes has remarked, 
in the previously quoted preface to his novel 
" Sister St. Sulpice," — 

" The talent of dazzling with strange events, of in- 
teresting by means of complicated intrigues and im- 
possible characters, is possessed to-day in Europe by 
several hundreds of writers, while there are not much 
more than a dozen of those who can awaken interest 
with the common acts of existence, and with the paint- 
ing of characters genuinely human." 

But these " hundreds of writers " have 
learned at least to avoid certain pitfalls into 
which the authors of realistic fiction have 
been apt to stumble. They have learned not 
to preach, not to go too far in depicting un- 
pleasant phases of life, and not to let a love 
of accuracy of detail persuade them into the 
composition of pages that are only weariness 
to the reader. In the long history of the 
English novel there has been no period when 
so many readable books have been written as 
in the last twenty-five years. Whether many 



280 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

of these books are destined to last beyond the 
moment may naturally be doubted. The very 
variety and originality which captures the 
public attention for the season are often an 
obstacle to permanent literary fame. To 
quote once more from the preface to " Sister 
St. Sulpice : " — 

" Extremely original works produce a lively impres- 
sion upon the public for the moment, but are speedily 
forgotten. And this is because their originality fre- 
quently lies in a deviation from the truth, and truth is 
not slow in reasserting its sway, because it alone is eter- 
nal and beautiful. The public does not admire the poet 
or novelist who holds the reins of his imagination and 
makes it serve his purpose, who understands how to give 
fit preparation to his work and writes with naturalness 
and good sense. And yet as a general rule these are 
the ones that become immortal." 

Romanticism No discussion of romantic fic- 
and idealism. ^ on j g adequate which leaves out 
of view the relation of romanticism to ideal- 
ism. Idealism is necessary, is inevitable, in 
every true work of art. It means building 
up a whole in accordance with the artist's 
idea ; it means freeing his material from ac- 
cidental elements so that he may express its 
real significance. There is as profound and 
far-reaching idealism in a realistic novel like 



ROMANTICISM 281 

" Middlemarch " as there is in a romance like 
Sienkiewicz's " Fire and Sword." But many 
discussions of realism have devoted them- 
selves to pointing out a supposed antagonism 
between realism and idealism, as if no realis- 
tic novel could possibly express an ideal. By 
far the more vital contrast is, as we have seen, 
between realism and romanticism. That is to 
say, along what lines is the artist to work out 
his ideal ? Is he to stand solidly upon the 
earth, to base his work upon the actualities 
of mortal experience, or is he to leave the 
earth behind him and go voyaging off into 
the blue ? Tolstoi's " Kesurrection," with 
its frank inclusion of many repellent and 
painful aspects of human experience, is a 
thoroughly realistic piece of fiction. Yet its 
main theme is to show what sort of recon- 
struction of human society would be neces- 
sary if the teachings of the New Testament 
were really to be accepted as an actual rule 
of life. There could be no theme more ideal- 
istic than this. On the other hand, Miss 
Johnston's " To Have and to Hold " is a 
frankly romantic story, one in which the men 
are brave and the women beautiful ; where 
there are pirates and shipwrecks, sword and 



282 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

saddle, battle, murder, and sudden cieath. It 
portrays such a state of society as lever ex- 
isted in Colonial Virginia or anywhere else 
upon the face of the earth. It likewise is a 
piece of pure idealism ; it " leaves th 3 ground 
to lose itself in the sky." But it if. as truly 
romantic in its entire texture as Tolstoi's 
study of contemporary Kussia is realistic. 

In the last analysis, therefore, 

What does . • 1 1 • 

the novelist the question becomes simply this : 

think of Ufe? * _ . . . r J . 

What does the artist in fiction think 
of life ? If he believes it to be a good thing, 
the best thing God has given us, he may 
wish, and probably will wish, to keep his art 
close to it. Provided he have ideas, there is 
no danger that his work will lack idealism. 
But if, on the other hand, he desires "bet- 
ter bread than wheaten," if life does not seem 
to him very good, then he must surely dream 
out something different. He must create an 
imaginary world, whether in Colonial Vir- 
ginia or elsewhere, and keep his art close to 
that. He too, provided he have ideas, will 
not lack idealism. But whatever he thinks 
about life itself, about the conditions in which 
plain men and women move and form the 
shifting figures in the pattern of the eternal 



ROMANTICISM 283 

human comedy, it is his task to make some- 
thing beautiful. He must give pleasure, no 
matter from what materials the texture of his 
craft is woven, no matter what method he 
chooses to adopt. Which material or which 
method gives the higher pleasure, the more 
permanent delight, to generations of read- 
ers, will depend entirely upon the readers 
themselves. It can never be settled by any 
theoretical discussion of the advantages and 
disadvantages of realistic or romantic art. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE QUESTION OF FORM 

" The form, it seems to me, is to be appreciated after the 
fact : then the author's choice has been made, his standard has 
been indicated ; then we can follow lines and directions, and 
compare tones and resemblances. Then, in a word, we can 
enjoy one of the most charming of pleasures, we can estimate 
quality, we can apply the test of execution." 

Henry James, Partial Portraits. 

to be well ^ one °^ the most genial pas- 

written ' sages of his "Partial Portraits/' 
Mr. Henry James has described those Sun- 
day afternoon gatherings of a famous group 
of novelists in Flaubert's little salon, where 
the talk concerned itself mainly with the 
methods of the art of fiction. These men 
had long since passed beyond the point where 
they interested themselves with questions of 
morals or conscious purpose ; to them " the 
only duty of a novel was to be well written ; 
that merit included every other of which it 
was capable." 
Matter, man, What does " well written " mean ? 

and manner, jj. j g ft q ues ti on f form, of adapt- 



THE QUESTION OF FORM 285 

ing means to ends. In the earlier chapters 
of this book we have been considering the 
material used by the novelist in its rela- 
tions to the material used by cognate arts, 
as well as with a view to its adaptability 
for the structural purposes of the fictionist. 
We have seen how the elements of character, 
plot, and setting lend themselves to the mould- 
ing imagination of the fiction-writer. We 
then studied the fiction- writer himself, en- 
deavoring to estimate the influence of his 
personality upon his conscious or unconscious 
selection of material. In the chapters devoted 
to realism and romanticism we saw that these 
tendencies — these general fashions of envis- 
aging one's material — are to be traced back 
to the writer's attitude towards life, as well 
as to the influence of the literary fashions 
prevailing in different periods of a national 
literature. We have now to observe the final 
step in the production of a work of fiction, 
that is to say, the writer's choice of form, 
his mastery of language, — in short, his skill 
in execution. The matter, the man, and the 
manner ; that, for better or worse, has been 
the order we have followed. 



286 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

The province I n analyzing a writer's manner, 
of rhetoric. that is, his personal adaptation of 
the literary means at his disposal to the end 
he has in view, we enter upon the territory 
of rhetoric. It is the students of rhetoric, 
of style, who have made the clearest exposi- 
tion of those various kinds of composition 
which are to be observed in prose fiction. 
They have furnished special treatises upon 
" The Literature of Feeling," 1 upon narra- 
tion 2 and description, 3 and they have illus- 
trated every variety of technical method from 
the practice of the modern fiction-writer. 
They have balanced the stylistic advantages 
and difficulties of such varying fictional 
forms as the romance and the novel, the 
allegory and the short story. It is not the 
purpose of the present chapter to take up 
such questions in detail. All that I shall 
endeavor to do is to point out to the serious 
reader of fiction some of the paths which he 
may follow, if he will, and then, in the suc- 
ceeding chapter, to select one typical form of 

1 J. H. Gardiner, The Forms of Prose Literature. New 
York : Scribuers. 

2 W. T. Brewster, Prose Narration. New York : Holt. 

3 C. S. Baldwin, Prose Description. New York : Holt. 



THE QUESTION OF FOKM 287 

fiction, the short story, for more detailed 
treatment. 

For it is only the reader who 

. . The student 

takes his fiction rather seriously and the 

,.,.,, . , . , n . public. 

who is likely to interest nimselt m 
questions of form. The great public con- 
cerns itself chiefly with the " stuff " of a 
novel ; it simply asks : Does this new book 
impart any thrills of emotion ? Is it inter- 
esting ? Does it have a good " story ' 5 ? 
Does it give a glimpse of people and places 
worth knowing : Lincoln, Napoleon, Richard 
the Lion Heart; California, India, London, 
Paris ? Whether the book is " well written," 
in the technical sense, is a question concern- 
ing which the general public is quite indif- 
ferent. And it is a wholesome thing for the 
student of style in fiction to place himself, 
now and again, frankly on the territory occu- 
pied by the great public ; to remember that 
the " stuff " in itself has aesthetic values 
that are never to be neglected or underrated, 
that there are sound human reasons for that 
preference of the untrained public for the 
" picture that tells a story " over the picture 
that is simply well painted. I have known 
novelists to hesitate and agonize over the 



288 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

question of writing a certain story in the 
first person or the third person ; drafting it 
now under one form, now under another ; 
rejoicing over the technical opportunities of 
the autobiographical method, and mourning 
over its necessary limitations ; liking the 
objective, impartial " third person " point of 
view, yet finding it perhaps too cold and 
colorless for that particular story. This is 
a good example of those questions of pure 
form in which students of fiction and some 
writers of fiction take a natural interest, but 
towards which the public remains blandly in- 
different. If " Esmond " is a " good story," 
thinks the public, what earthly difference 
does it make whether it is written in the 
first person or the third person, or now in 
one and now in the other ? The present 
chapter, however, is written for the compara- 
tively few people who believe that the choice 
of form is significant, as bearing upon the 
total impression made by the story. 

But it should be remembered, 

The infinite . tip p 

variety of in the hrst place, that the forms ot 

prose fiction are extremely flexible. 

It is impossible, as we have seen, to apply to 

them the comparatively rigid rules that are 



THE QUESTION OF FORM 289 

exemplified in the epic, the lyric, the drama. 
And even after a general choice of fictional 
form has been made — let us say, for in- 
stance, in favor of the short story rather 
than the novel as the better artistic medium 
for the conveyance of a certain idea, a certain 
impression of life — there are infinite pos- 
sible modifications of form, due to the vary- 
ing personal power of expression possessed by 
different writers. Turgenieff and Mr. Kip- 
ling, let us say, will both exercise an unerring 
instinct in determining that a given theme 
can be better presented in a dozen pages than 
in a hundred. But there the similarity of 
choice ends. The two men have different 
eyes, minds, hands. The brush-work is not 
the same ; no trained reader can possibly mis- 
take a page of Turgenieff for a page of 
Kipling. The selection of words, the order- 
ing of sentences, the arrangement of events, 
reveal the style of the individual workman. 
The contrast between two works in different 
genres — for instance Trollope's "Barchester 
Towers" and one of Hardy's " Wessex Tales " 
— involves not only all those differences in 
material and in personality which we have 
already discussed, but countless subtleties of 



290 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

style, of manner. Such a comparative study 
implies, on the one hand, a knowledge of 
the technique of prose fiction considered as 
an abstract medium of expression, and on 
the other, the closest scrutiny of the com- 
mand of language, the individual power over 
words, possessed by these two writers. 

How is the student of fiction to 
of style: train himself in such analysis? I 
know of no better method than 
that followed in such excellent handbooks as 
Minto's " Manual of English Prose Liter- 
ature " 1 or Clark's " English Prose Writers." 2 
In Professor Minto's book, for example, there 
are careful studies of representative British 
authors, who are minutely examined under 
such headings as Life, Character, and Opin- 
ions, in order to insure, first of all, an intelli- 
gent knowledge of the man behind the book. 
Then the Elements of Style are considered : 
the Vocabulary, its constituents and charac- 
teristics, the Senteuces and Paragraphs ; then 
the Qualities of Style, such as Simplicity, 

1 William Minto, A Manual of English Prose Literature. 
New York and Boston : Ginn. 

2 J. Scott Clark, A Study of English Prose Writers : A 
Laboratory Method. New York : Scribners. 



THE QUESTION OF FORM 291 

Clearness, Strength, Pathos, the Ludicrous, 
Melody, Harmony, Taste. His Figures of 
Speech are then analyzed and classified, and 
finally, taking a broader outlook, there is an 
estimate of the author's accomplishment in 
the varying kinds of composition, such as 
Description, Narration, Exposition, and Per- 
suasion. 

Professor Clark's method of 
analytic study is similar in aim, laboratory 
although it differs in details. In 
his own words, " the method consists in de- 
termining the particular and distinctive fea- 
tures of a writer's style (using the term " style" 
in its wide sense), in sustaining that analysis 
by a very wide consensus of critical opinion, 
in illustrating the particular characteristics of 
each writer by voluminous and carefully se- 
lected extracts from his works, and in then 
requiring the pupil to find in the works of 
the writer parallel illustrations." In the sec- 
tion devoted to Dickens, for example, there 
is first a brief Biographical Outline, followed 
by a Bibliography on Dickens's style. Then 
follows a list of Particular Characteristics as 
pointed out by competent critics, each char- 
acteristic being also illustrated by extracts 



292 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

from the novels. They are grouped under 
eleven heads : 1. Fondness for Caricature — 
Exaggeration — Grotesqueness. 2. Genial 
Humor. 3. Incarnation of Characteristics — 
Single Strokes. 4. Descriptive Power — Mi- 
nuteness of Observation — Vividness. 5. 
Tender, sometimes Mawkish, Pathos. 6. 
Gayet y — Animal Spirits — Good-Fellowship. 
7. Sincerity — Manliness — Earnestness. 8. 
Broad Sympathy — Plain, Practical Human- 
ity. 9. Dramatic Power. 10. Vulgarity — 
Artificiality. 11. DifTuseness. 

Does all this sound rather school- 

The value of , . 

such disci- masterish ? It is schoolmasterish if 

pline. 

done pedantically, with over-literal- 
ness, and considered as an end in itself. But 
it is only by some such exact discipline in the 
appreciation of a literary product that "we can 
enjoy one of the most charming of pleasures, 
we can estimate quality, we can apply the test 
of execution." Let the reader take a single 
book of any of the masters of fiction, and 
devote a few days or weeks to writing out, 
with the most scrupulous care, such critical 
notes upon it as Minto and Clark have sug- 
gested. He will not only never regret the 
labor, but unless he is a born pedant, he will 



THE QUESTION OF FORM 293 

read fiction thereafter with new eyes and a 
new delight. If he be a born pedant, unwill- 
ing to look beyond his own critical categories, 
unable to see the wood for the trees, then his 
soul has gone blind already, and a little more 
rhetorical analysis will not do it any harm. 

The standpoint of the present The writer's 
chapter, it will be observed, has point of view ' 
hitherto been that of the reader of fiction. 
It is based upon the belief that the pleasure 
to be derived from novel reading is enhanced 
in proportion to one's intelligent perception 
of the nature of the writer's problems and of 
the skill with which he has overcome them. 
Let us now shift our point of view, and en- 
deavor to place ourselves in the position of 
the writer of fiction. Does his understanding 
of the theory and technique of his art con- 
tribute to his practical mastery of it ? Un- 
derstanding is not mastery, of course ; yet 
for all except the geniuses — who may be 
trusted to find their road across country — it 
is the straightest path to mastery. It was to 
some purpose that George Eliot had perfected 
her theory of fiction at thirty-five, before she 
had written a fine of fiction herself. If the 



294 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

" young writer " has objectively studied the 
laws of fiction, as they have been commented 
upon by such skilled workmen as Mr. Henry 
James, Stevenson, Bourget, and many more, 
it is his own fault if he has not gained a clearer 
knowledge of what he is doing, as well as 
some measure of inspiration for his task. 

How far is technical excellence in 

What train- . . on* 

ing is neces- the composition oi fiction a matter 
of training ? It is surely a miscon- 
ception that no training at all is required, that 
if "you have it in you," all that is necessary 
is to take pen and paper and begin. One is 
about as likely to turn out a great work of fic- 
tion by following that programme as he would 
be to paint a great picture the first time he 
handled the brush. Yet it is certainly easier 
to write a tolerable novel the " first time try- 
ing " than to paint a tolerable picture. The 
reason is, obviously, that the artistic medium 
of fiction, namely, language, is a tool with 
which all of us are somewhat familiar. And 
if, besides possessing resources of language, 
one has already trained himself, consciously 
or unconsciously, in the observation of va- 
ried types of character, in vivid narration and 
description, in the dramatic, the imaginative 



THE QUESTION OF FORM 295 

way of confronting human life, he may with- 
out suspecting it be already a matured novel- 
ist in everything except the actual writing of 
the story. How many letter- writers still pos- 
sess these gifts in perfection ! From this 
point of view, such famous " first books " as 
Scott's " Waverley," written at forty-three, 
Richardson's " Pamela," written at fifty-one, 
and George Eliot's " Scenes from Clerical 
Life," written at thirty-five, are not such per- 
tinent examples of " the first time trying " as 
of the long general preparation for an unfore- 
seen, specific task. 

It should be noted, furthermore, 

. , ,, . Maturing of 

that technical excellence m compo- hand and 
sition is often gained more quickly 
than the intellectual processes which are also 
involved in the production of notable fiction. 
The early work of Thackeray, Hawthorne, 
Stevenson, and Mr. Kipling is an illustra- 
tion of the hand maturing before the mind. 
Hawthorne and Stevenson, in particular, wrote 
admirable English before they really had any- 
thing to say. The ultimate question con- 
cerning a novelist is, of course, a two-fold 
one : What does he have to say ? and how 
does he say it ? In the case of many novel- 



296 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

ists who have achieved great things, the sec- 
ond part of the question can be answered 
favorably long before one can reply with 
any confidence to the first. There is a 
charming story of the youthful Tennyson 
brothers, Charles and Alfred, to the effect 
that they stayed at home from church one 
Sunday, and Charles, the elder, assigned to 
Alfred the roses in the rectory garden as a 
subject for a poem. Alfred, who was not 
many years out of the cradle, obediently filled 
his slate with verses. Whereupon his elder 
brother remarked with grave finality, "Al- 
fred, you can write ! " That verdict can be 
rendered upon many men up and down the 
world to-day, who seem, nevertheless, to find 
nothing worth writing about. But in the 
mean time it is something, at least, to be a 
master of the instrument. 

This may throw some light upon 

Can the art of . J tip 

fiction be the question first brought before 

taught? A . ° 

the public by Sir Walter Besant's 
lecture upon " The Art of Fiction," namely, 
whether that art can be taught. If by this 
question one means the technical handling of 
narration and description as media of expres- 
sion, it should be answered in the affirmative. 



THE QUESTION OF FORM 297 

In that sense fiction- writing can be taught, 
precisely as versification or essay and oration 
writing are taught. Thousands of young 
people are practicing it every day in this coun- 
try, under the eye of competent instructors 
in rhetoric. How far the pupil may go will 
naturally depend more upon the pupil him- 
self than upon the mere method of instruc- 
tion. In the class in " description " there 
will be now and then a young Daudet, or a 
Sentimental Tommy with a preternatural in- 
stinct for the mot juste ; and in the class in 
" narration " some Charles Reade or Clark 
Russell will exhibit an astounding facility in 
spinning a yarn. But as a rule this delib- 
erate effort to apprentice one's self to the 
novel- writing trade gives the "young writer" 
very much what the "young reader" may 
also gain from it, that is, merely a quickened 
perception of the nature of the novelist's 
craft. 

I venture to add without com- Besa nt's 
ment Sir Walter Besant's "Rules 2T f ° r 
for Novel- Writers," as an interest- Writers -" 
ing contribution from a writer who has won 
honorable recognition for his work : 1. Prac- 
tice writing something original every day. 2. 



298 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

Cultivate the habit of observation. 3. Work 
regularly at certain hours. 4. Read no rub- 
bish. 5. Aim at the formation of style. 6. 
Endeavor to be dramatic. 7. A great element 
of dramatic skill is selection. 8. Avoid the 
sin of writing about a character. 9. Never 
attempt to describe any kind of life except 
that with which you are familiar. 10. Learn 
as much as you can about men and women. 
11. For the sake of forming a good natural 
style, and acquiring command of language, 
write poetry. 

Fewer books, But it may honestly be doubted if 
and better. these rules, or any rules or course 
of discipline, will turn a naturally poor work- 
man into a good one. If some one could 
devise a set of rules that would discourage 
mediocrity from rushing into print, and reduce 
the ranks of fiction-writers instead of swell- 
ing them, he would deserve well of his gen- 
eration. What we need, surely, is not more 
novels, but higher tests of excellence. The 
training suggested in this chapter is primarily 
that which helps the reader to discern the 
good from the bad, the genuine product of 
thought and passion from the shoddy senti- 
mentality, the empty sound and fury of the 



THE QUESTION OF FORM 299 






fiction that perishes in a day. That instinct 
for form which gives the final perfection to 
a novel cannot be imparted by the study of 
form ; it is born and not made ; it comes from 
some glimpse of enduring beauty as revealed 
to the true artist soul. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE SHORT STORY 

"For here, at least [in the short story], we have the condi- 
tions of perfect art ; there is no subdivision of interest ; the, 
author can strike directly in, without preface, can move with 
determined step toward a conclusion, and can — highest privi- 
lege ! — stop when he is done." 

Thomas Wentworth Higginson. 

a hint from The initial difficulty in discussing 

Thackeray. ^ Q short story is that old danger 
of taking one's subject either too seriously or 
else not seriously enough. If one could but 
hit upon the proper key at the outset, one 
might possibly hope to edify the strenuous 
reader, and at the same time to propitiate the 
frivolous. Let us make certain of our key, 
therefore, by promptly borrowing one ! And 
we will take our hint as to the real nature of 
the short story from that indisputable master 
of the long story, Thackeray. In his " Round- 
about Paper" "On a Lazy Idle Boy" there is a 
picture, all in six lines, of " a score of white- 
bearded, white-robed warriors, or grave sen- 



THE SHORT STORY 301 

iors of the city, seated at the gate of Jaffa 
or Beyrout, and listening to the story-teller 
reciting his marvels out of The Arabian 
Nights." That picture, symbol as it was to 
Thackeray of the story-teller's role, may well 
hover in the background of one's memory as 
he discourses of the short story as a form of 
literary art. 

Is it a distinct form, with laws Isitadis . 
and potencies that differentiate it tmctform? 
sharply from other types of literature ? This 
question is a sort of turnstile, through which 
one must wriggle, or over which one must 
boldly leap, in order to reach our field of in- 
vestigation. Some of my readers are familiar 
with a magazine article, written many years 
ago by Mr. Brander Matthews, entitled " The 
Philosophy of the Short-Story," and recently 
revised and issued as a little volume. 1 It will 
be observed that Professor Matthews spells 
f short-story " with a hyphen, and claims that 
the short-story, hyphenated, is something very 
different from a story that merely happens 
to be short. It is, he believes, a distinct 

1 The Philosophy of the Short-Story. By Brander Mat- 
thews, D. C. L. New York : Longmans, Green and Com- 
pany, 1901. 



302 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

species ; an art form by itself ; a new liter- 
ary genre, in short, characterized by com- 
pression, originality, ingenuity, a touch of 
fantasy, and by the fact that no love interest 
is needed to hold its parts together. Mr. 
Matthews gives pertinent illustrations of 
these characteristics, and comments in an in- 
teresting fashion upon recent British and 
American examples of the short-story. But 
one is tempted to ask if the white-bearded, 
white-robed warriors at the gate of Jaffa were 
not listening, centuries and centuries ago, to 
tales marked by compression, originality, in- 
genuity, a touch of fantasy, and all the other 
" notes " of this new type of literature. 

The critical trail blazed so plainly 

A new form? .. . „ p 1 . ,. 

by the professor or dramatic litera- 
ture at Columbia has been followed by sev- 
eral authors of recent volumes devoted to 
the modern art of short story writing. 1 But 
story-telling, surely, is as old as the day when 
men first gathered round a camp-fire or wo- 
men huddled in a cave ! The study of com- 
parative folk-lore is teaching us every day 
how universal is the instinct for it. Even 
were we to leave out of view the literature of 

1 See the Bibliography for the present chapter. 



THE SHORT STORY 303 

oral tradition, and take the earlier written 
literature of any European people, — for in- 
stance, the tales told by Chaucer and some 
of his Italian models, — we should find these 
modern characteristics of originality, ingenu- 
ity, and the rest in almost unrivaled perfec- 
tion, and perhaps come to the conclusion 
of Chaucer himself, as he exclaims in whim- 
sical despair, " There is no new thing that 
is not old ! " And yet if the question be 
put point-blank, "Do not such short story 
writers as Stevenson, Mr. Kipling, Miss 
Jewett, Bret Harte, Daudet — not to men- 
tion Poe and Hawthorne — stand for a new 
movement, a distinct type of literature ? - 
one is bound to answer " Yes." Here is 
work that contrasts very strongly, not only 
with the Italian novella, and other mediaeval 
types, but even with the English and Ameri- 
can tales of two generations ago. Where 
lies the difference ? For Professor Matthews 
is surely right in holding that there is a dif- 
ference. It is safer to trace it, however, not 
in the external characteristics of this modern 
work, every feature of which can easily be 
paralleled in prehistoric myths, but rather 
in the attitude of the contemporary short 



304 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

story writer toward his material, and in his 
conscious effort to achieve under certain con- 
ditions a certain effect. And no one has 
defined this conscious attitude and aim so 
clearly as Edgar Allan Poe. 

In that perpetually quoted essay 

upon Hawthorne's " Tales," written 

in 1842 — one of the earliest and to this day 

one of the best criticisms of Hawthorne — 

Poe remarks : — 

" Were I bidden to say how the highest genius could 
be most advantageously employed for the best display 
of its own powers, I should answer, without hesitation 
— in the composition of a rhymed poem, not to exceed 
in length what might be perused in an hour. Within 
this limit alone can the highest order of true poetry 
exist. I need only here say, upon this topic, that in 
almost all classes of composition, the unity of effect or 
impression is a point of the greatest importance. It is 
clear, moreover, that this unity cannot be thoroughly 
preserved in productions whose perusal cannot be com- 
pleted at one sitting. We may continue the reading 
of a prose composition, from the very nature of prose 
itself, much longer than we can persevere, to any good 
purpose, in the perusal of a poem. This latter, if truly 
fulfilling the demands of the poetic sentiment, induces 
an exaltation of the soul which cannot be long sus- 
tained. All high excitements are necessarily transient. 
Thus a long poem is a paradox. And without unity 
of impression the deepest effects cannot be brought 
about. . . . 



THE SHORT STORY \ 305 

"Were I called upon, however, to designate that 
class of composition which, next to such a poem as I 
have suggested, should best fulfill the demands of high - 
genius — should offer it the most advantageous field of 
exertion — I should unhesitatingly speak of the prose 
tale, as Mr. Hawthorne has here exemplified it. I 
allude to the short prose narrative, requiring from a 
half hour to one or two hours in its perusal. The or- 
dinary novel is objectionable, from its length, for rea- 
sons already stated in substance. As it cannot be read 
at one sitting, it deprives itself, of course, of the im- 
mense force derivable from totality. Worldly interests 
intervening during the pauses of perusal, modify, annul, 
or counteract, in a greater or less degree, the impres- 
sions of the book. But simple cessation in reading 
would, of itself, be sufficient to destroy the true unity. 
In the brief tale, however, the author is enabled to 
carry out the fullness of his intention, be it what it 
may. During the hour of perusal the soul of the rgader 
is at the writer's control. There are no external ^frv 
extrinsic influences — resulting from weariness or in- 
terruption. 

" A skillful literary artist has constructed a tale. If 
wise, he has not fashioned his thoughts to accommodate 
his incidents ; but having conceived, with deliberate 
care, a certain unique or single effect to be wrought 
out, he then invents such incidents, — he then combines 
such events as may best aid him in establishing this 
preconceived effect. If his very initial sentence tend 
not to the outbringing of this effect, then he has failed 
in his first step. In the whole composition there should 
be no word written, of which the tendency, direct or 
indirect, is not to the one preestablished design. And 



306 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

by such means, with such care and skill, a picture is at 
length painted which leaves in the mind of him who 
contemplates it with a kindred art, a sense of the full- 
est satisfaction. The idea of the tale has been pre- 
sented unblemished, because undisturbed ; and this is 
an end unattainable by the novel." 

The starting ^ we assen t to Poe's reasoning, 
point. we are a £ once U p 0n nrm ground. 

The short story in prose literature corre- 
sponds, then, to the lyric in poetry ; like the 
lyric, its unity of effect turns largely upon its 
brevity ; and as there are well known laws of 
lyric structure which the lyric poet violates 
at his peril or obeys to his triumph, so the 
short story must observe certain conditions 
and may enjoy certain freedoms that are pe- 
culiar to itself. Doubtless our professional 
story-tellers seated before the gate of Jaffa 
or Beyrout had ages ago a naive, instinctive 
apprehension of these principles of their art ; 
but it is equally true that the story-writers 
of our own day, profiting by the accumulated 
experience of the race, responding quickly to 
international literary influences, prompt to 
learn from and to imitate one another, are 
consciously, and no doubt self-consciously, 
studying then art as it has never been studied 



THE SHORT STORY 307 

before. Every magazine brings new experi- 
ments in method, or new variations of the 
old themes ; and it would speak ill for the in- 
telligence of these workmen if there could be 
no registration of results. Some such regis- 
tration may, at any rate, be attempted without 
being unduly dogmatic, and without making 
one's pleasure in a short story too solemn and 
heart-searching an affair. 

Every work of fiction, long or 
short, depends for its charm and plot, and 

, , -. setting. 

power — as we nave already seen 
— upon one or all of three elements : the 
characters, the plot, and the setting. Here 
are certain persons, doing certain things, in 
certain circumstances ; and the fiction-writer 
tells us about one or another or all three of 
these phases of his theme. Sometimes he 
creates vivid characters, but does not know 
what to do with them ; sometimes he invents 
very intricate and thrilling plots, but the men 
and women remain nonentities ; sometimes 
he lavishes his skill on the background, the 
milieu, the manners and morals of the age, 
the all-enveloping natural forces or historic 
movements, while his heroes and heroines are 



308 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

hurriedly pushed here and there into place, 
like dolls at a dolls' tea-party. But the mas- 
ters of fiction, one need hardly say, know 
how to beget men and women, and to make 
them march toward events, with the earth 
beneath their feet and overhead the sky. 
character- Suppose we turn to the first of 

drawing. these three potential elements of 
interest and ask what are the requirements 
of the short story as regards the delineation 
of character. Looking at the characters 
alone, and not, for the moment, at the plot 
or the setting, is there any difference between 
the short story and the novel ? There is this 
very obvious difference : if it is a character- 
story at all, the characters must be unique, 
original enough to catch the eye at once. 
Everybody knows that in a novel a common- 
place person may be made interesting by a 
deliberate, patient exposition of his various 
traits, precisely as we can learn to like very 
uninteresting persons in real life if circum- 
stances place them day after day at our el- 
bows. Who of us would not grow impatient 
with the early chapters of " The Newcomes," 
for instance, or " The Antiquary," if it were 
not for our faith that Thackeray and Scott 



THE SHORT STORY 309 

know their business, and that every one of 
those commonplace people will contribute 
something in the end to the total effect ? 
And even where the gradual development of 
character, rather than the mere portrayal of 
character, is the theme of a novelist, as so 
frequently with George Eliot, how colorless 
may be the personality at the outset, how 
narrow the range of thought and experience 
portrayed ! Yet, in George Eliot's own 
words, " these commonplace people have a 
conscience, and have felt the sublime prompt- 
ing to do the painful right." They take on 
dignity from their moral struggle, whether 
the struggle ends in victory or defeat. By 
an infinite number of subtle touches they are 
made to grow and change before our eyes, 
like living, fascinating things. 

But all this takes time, — far swiftdevei- 
more time than is at the disposal opmeIlt ■ 
of the short story writer. If his special theme 
be the delineation of character, he dare not 
choose colorless characters ; if his theme is 
character-development, then that development 
must be hastened by striking experiences, — 
like a plant forced in a hothouse instead of 
left to the natural conditions of sun and 



310 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

cloud and shower: For instance, if it be a 
love story, the hero and heroine must begin 
their decisive battle at once, without the ad- 
vantage of a dozen chapters of preliminary 
skirmishing. If the hero is to be made into 
a villain or a saint, the chemistry must be of 
the swiftest ; that is to say, unusual forces are 
brought to bear upon somewhat unusual per- 
sonalities. It is an interesting consequence 
of this necessity for choosing the exceptional 
rather than the normal that, so far as the 
character-element is concerned, the influence 
of the modern short story is thrown upon the 
side of romanticism rather than of realism, 
not alone And yet it is by no means neces- 

will serve. gary ^ the ghort gt()ry ^^ 

depend upon character-drawing for its effect. 
If its plot be sufficiently entertaining, comi- 
cal, novel, thrilling, the characters may be 
the merest lay figures and yet the story re- 
main an admirable work of art. Poe's tales 
of ratiocination, as he loved to call them, like 
"The Gold-Bug," " The Purloined Letter," 
or his tales of pseudo-science, like " A De- 
scent into the Maelstrom," are dependent for 
none of their power upon any interest attach- 
ing to character. The exercise of the pure 



THE SHORT STORY 311 

logical faculty, or the wonder and the terror 
of the natural world, gives scope enough for 
that consummate craftsman. We have lately 
lost one of the most ingenious and delightful 
of American story-writers, whose tales of 
whimsical predicament illustrate this point 
very perfectly. Given the conception of 
"Negative Gravity," what comic possibili- 
ties unfold themselves, quite without refer- 
ence to the personality of the experimenter ! 
I should be slow to assert that the individual 
idiosyncrasies of the passengers aboard that 
remarkable vessel, The Thomas Hyke, do not 
heighten the effect produced by their singu- 
lar adventure, but they are not the essence 
of it. " The Lady or the Tiger ? " remains 
a perpetual riddle, does it not, precisely be- 
cause it asks : " What would a woman do 
in that predicament ? " Not what this par- 
ticular barbarian princess would do, for the 
author cunningly neglected to give her any 
individualized traits. We know nothing 
about her ; so that there are as many an- 
swers to the riddle as there are women in the 
world. We know tolerably well what choice 
would be made in those circumstances by a 
specific woman like Becky Sharp or Dorothea 



312 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

Casaubon or Little Em'ly ; but to affirm what 
a woman would decide ? Ah, no ; Mr. 
Stockton was quite too clever to attempt 
that. 

Precisely the same obliteration 

Obliteration p J 

of personal ot personal traits is to be noted in 
some tales involving situations that 
are meant to be taken very seriously indeed. 
The reader will recall Poe's story of the 
Spanish Inquisition, entitled " The Pit and 
the Pendulum." The unfortunate victim of 
the inquisitors lies upon his back, strapped 
to the stone floor of his dungeon. Directly 
above him is suspended a huge pendulum, a 
crescent of glittering steel, razor-edged, which 
at every sweep to and fro lowers itself inch 
by inch towards the helpless captive. As he 
lies there, gazing frantically upon the terrific 
oscillations of that hissing steel, struggling, 
shrieking, or calculating with the calmness 
of despair, Poe paints with extraordinary 
vividness his sensations and his thoughts. 
But who is he ? He is nobody — anybody, 
— he is John Doe or Richard Roe, — he is 
man under mortal agony — not a particular 
man ; he has absolutely no individuality, 
save possibly in the ingenuity by means of 



THE SHORT STORY 313 

which he finally escapes. I should not wish 
to imply that this is a defect in the story. 
By no means. Poe has wrought out, no 
doubt, precisely the effect he intended: the 
situation itself is enough without any specific 
characterization ; and yet suppose we had 
Daniel Deronda strapped to that floor, or 

I Mr. Micawber, or Terence Mulvaney? At 
any rate, the sensations and passions and 
wily stratagems of these distinct personalities 
would be more interesting than the emotions 
of Poe's lay figure. The novelist who should 
place them there would be bound to tell us 
what they — and no one else — would feel 
and do in that extremity of anguish. Not to 
tell us would be to fail to make the most of the 
artistic possibilities of the situation. Poe's 
task, surely, was much less complex. " The 
Pit and the Pendulum " is perfect in its way; 
but if the incident had been introduced into 
a novel, a different perfection would have been 
demanded. 

Nor is it otherwise if we turn to The back . 
that third element of effect in fie- ground - 
tion ; namely, the circumstances or events en- 
veloping the characters and action of the 
tale. The nature of the short story is such 



314 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

that both characters and action may be al- 
most without significance, provided the at- 
mosphere — the place and time — the back- 
ground — is artistically portrayed. Here is 
the source of the perennial pleasure to be 
found in Mr. P. Deming's simple "Adiron- 
dack Stories." If the author can discover 
to us a new corner of the world, or sketch 
the familiar scene to our heart's desire, or il- 
lumine one of the great human occupations, 
as war, or commerce, or industry, he has it 
in his power, through this means alone, to 
give us the fullest satisfaction. The modern 
feeling for landscape, the modern curiosity 
about social conditions, the modern aesthetic 
sense for the characteristic rather than for 
the beautiful as such, all play into the short 
story writer's hands. Many a reader, no 
doubt, takes up Miss Wilkin s's stories, not 
because he cares much about the people in 
them or what the people do, but just to breathe 
for twenty minutes the New England air — 
if in truth that be the New England air ! 
You may even have homesickness for a place 
you have never seen, — some Delectable 
Duchy in Cornwall, a window in Thrums, a 
Calif ornian mining camp deserted before you 



THE SHORT STORY 315 

were born, — and Mr. Quiller Couch, or Mr. 
Barrie, or Bret Harte will take you there, 
and that is all you ask of them. The popu- 
larity which Stephen Crane's war stories en- 
joyed for a season was certainly not due to his 
characters, for his personages had no charac- 
ter — not even names — nor to the plot, for 
there was none. But the sights and sounds 
and odors and colors of War — as Crane 
imagined War — were plastered upon his 
vacant-minded heroes as you would stick a 
poster to a wall, and the trick was done. In 
other words, the setting was sufficient to pro- 
duce the intended effect. 

It is true, of course, that many 

, , . J The blend- 

Stones, and these perhaps of the ing of these 
. modes. 

highest rank, avail themselves of 
all three of these modes of impression. Bret 
Harte's " The Luck of Roaring Camp," Mr. 
Cable's " Posson Jone," Mr. Aldrich's " Mar- 
jorie Daw," Mr. Kipling's " The Man who 
rould be King," Miss Jewett's " The 
Queen's Twin," Miss Wilkins's " A New Eng- 
land Nun," Dr. Hale's "The Man without 
a Country," present people and events and 
circumstances, blended into an artistic whole, 
that defies analysis. But because we some- 



316 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

times receive full measure, pressed down and 
running over, we should not forget that the 
cup of delight may be filled in a simpler and 
less wonderful way. 

This thought suggests the con- 

Opportruiities . & ; °° 

aifordedto sideration of another aspect of our 

the writer. A . 

theme ; namely, the opportunity 
which the short story, as a distinct type of 
literature, gives to the writer. We have 
seen indirectly that it enables him to use all 
his material, to spread before us any hints in 
the fields of character or action or setting 
which his notebook may contain. Mr. Henry 
James's stories very often impress one as 
chips from the workshop where his novels 
were built, — or, to use a less mechanical 
metaphor, as an exploration of a tempting 
side path, of whose vistas he had caught a 
passing glimpse while pursuing some of his 
retreating and elusive major problems. It is 
obvious, likewise, that the short story gives 
a young writer most valuable experience at 
the least loss of time. He can tear up and 
try again. Alas, if he only would do so a 
little oftener ! He can test his fortune with 
the public through the magazines, without 
waiting to write his immortal book. For 



u 

i 



THE SHORT STORY 317 

older men in whom the creative impulse is 
comparatively feeble, or manifested at long 
intervals only, the form of the short story 
makes possible the production of a small 
quantity of highly finished work. But these 
incidental advantages to the author himself 
are not so much to our present purpose as 
are certain artistic opportunities which his 
strict limits of space allow him. 
In the brief tale, then, he may 

. . . . Didacticism. 

be didactic without wearying his 
audience. Not to entangle one's self in the 
interminable question about the proper lim- 
its of didacticism in the art of fiction, one 
may assert that it is at least as fair to say to 
the author, " You may preach if you wish, 
but at your own risk," as it is to say to him, 
" You shall not preach at all, because I do 
ot like to listen." Most of the greater Eng- 
ish fiction-writers, at any rate, have the hom- 
iletic habit. Dangerous as this habit is, 
uncomfortable as it makes us feel to get a 
sermon instead of a story, there is sometimes 
no great harm in a sermonette. " This is not 
a tale exactly. It is a tract," are the opening 
words of one of Mr. Kipling's stories, and the 
tale is no worse — and likewise, it is true, no 



318 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

better — for its profession of a moral pur- 
pose. Many a tract, in this generation so 
suspicious of its preachers, has disguised it- 
self as a short story, and made good reading, 
too. For that matter, not to grow quite un- 
mindful of our white-robed, white-bearded 
company sitting all this time by the gate of 
Jaffa, there is a very pretty moral even in 
the artless tale of Aladdin's Lamp. 
Posing The story - writer, furthermore, 

problems. ^as ^-g a( j van t a ge over the novel- 
ist, that he can pose problems without an- 
swering them. When George Sand and 
Charles Dickens wrote novels to exhibit cer- 
tain defects in the organization of human 
society, they not only stated their case, but 
they had their triumphant solution of the 
difficulty. So it has been with the drama, 
until very recently. The younger Dumas 
had his own answer for every one of his pro- 
blem-plays. But with Ibsen came the fashion 
of staging the question at issue, in unmis- 
takable terms, and not even suggesting that 
one solution is better than another. " Here 
are the facts for you," says Ibsen ; " here 
are the modern emotions for you ; my work 
is done." In precisely similar fashion does 



THE SHORT STORY 319 

a short story writer like Maupassant fling the 
facts in our face, brutally, pitilessly. We 
may make what we can of them ; it is no- 
thing to him. He poses his grim problem 
with surpassing skill, and that is all. A 
novel written in this way grows intolerable, 
and one may suspect that the contemporary 
problem-novel is apt to be such an unspeak- 
able affair, not merely for its dubious themes 
and more than dubious style, but because it 
reveals so little power to " lay " the ghosts 
it raises. 

Again, the short story writer is Art it ra ry 

always asking us to take a great premises - 

deal for granted. He begs to be allowed to 

state his own premises. He portrays, for 

instance, some marital comedy or tragedy, 

ingeniously enough. We retort, " Yes ; but 

how could he have ever fallen in love with 

ter in the first place ? " " Oh," replies the 

author off-hand, " that is another story." 

lut if he were a novelist, he would not get 

)ff so easily. He might have to write twenty 

chapters, and go back three generations, to 

show why his hero fell in love with her in 

the first place. All that any fiction can do 

— very naturally — is to give us, as we com- 



320 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

monly say, a mere cross-section of life. There 
are endless antecedents and consequents with 
which it has no concern ; but the cross-sec- 
tion of the story-writer is so much thinner 
that he escapes a thousand inconveniences, 
and even then considers it beneath him to 
explain his miracles. 

What is more, the laws of brevity 

Omission of . ' 1 1 • 

unlovely and unity of effect compel him to 

details. ... . 

omit, in his portrayal of life and 
character, many details that are unlovely. 
Unless, like some very gifted fiction-writers 
of our time, he makes a conscientious search 
for the repulsive, it is easy for him to paint a 
pleasant picture. Bret Harte's earliest stories 
show this happy instinct for the aesthetic, for 
touching the sunny places in the lives of ex- 
tremely disreputable men. His gamblers are 
exhibited in their charming mood ; his out- 
casts are revealed to us at the one moment 
of self-denying tenderness which insures our 
sympathy. Such a selective method is per- 
fectly legitimate and necessary ; " The Luck 
of Roaring Camp " and " The Outcasts of 
Poker Flat " each contains but slightly more 
than four thousand words. All art is selec- 
tive, for that matter ; but were a novelist to 



THE SHORT STORY 321 

take the personages of those stories and ex- 
hibit them as full-length figures, he would be 
bound to tell more of the truth about them, 
unpleasant as some of the details would be. 
Otherwise he would paint life in a wholly- 
wrong perspective. Bret Harte's master, 
Charles Dickens, did not always escape this 
temptation to juggle with the general truth of 
things ; the pupil escaped it, in these early- 
stories at least, simply because he was work- 
ing on a different scale. 

The space limits of the short story 

,, . , ... . t The horrible. 

allow its author likewise to make 
artistic use of the horrible, the morbid, the 
dreadful — subjects too poignant to give any 
pleasure if they were forced upon the atten- 
tion throughout a novel. " The Black Cat," 
" The Murders in the Eue Morgue," " A 
Descent into the Maelstrom," are admirable 
examples of Poe's art ; but he was too skill- 
ful a workman not to know that that sort 
of thing if it be done at all must be done 
quickly. Four hundred pages of " The 
Black Cat " would be impossible. 

And last in our list of the dis- i mpre ssioii- 
tinct advantages of the art form lsm " 
we are considering is the fact that it allows 



322 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

a man to make use of the vaguest sugges- 
tions, a delicate symbolism, a poetic impres- 
sionism, fancies too tenuous to hold in the 
stout texture of the novel. Wide is the 
scope of the art of fiction ; it includes even 
this borderland of dreams. Poe's marvelous 
" Shadow, a Parable," " Silence, a Fable ; " 
Hawthorne's "The Hollow of the Three 
Hills," or "The Snow - Image ; " many a 
prose poem that might be cited from French 
and Russian writers, — these illustrate the 
strange beauty and mystery of those twilight 
places where the vagrant imagination hovers 
for a moment and flutters on. 

It will be seen that all of the 

The under- . . 

lying opportunities that have been enu- 

prlnciple. _ . 

merated — the opportunity, namely, 
for innocent didacticism, for posing problems 
without answering them, for stating arbitrary 
premises, for omitting unlovely details and, 
conversely, for making beauty out of the hor- 
rible, and finally for poetic symbolism — are 
connected with the fact that in the short story 
the powers of the reader are not kept long 
upon the stretch. The reader shares in the 
large liberty which the short story affords to 
the author. This type of prose literature, 



THE SHORT STORY 323 

like the lyric in poetry, is such an old, and 
simple, and free mode of expressing the art- 
ist's personality ! As long as men are inter- 
esting to one another, as long as the infinite 
complexities of modern emotion play about 
situations that are as old as the race, so long 
will there be an opportunity for the free de- 
velopment of the short story as a literary 
form. 

Is there anything to be said upon 
the other side? Are the distinct J^JJg. 
advantages of this art form accom- lma * lnatlon - 
panied by any strict conditions, upon con- 
formity to which success depends ? For the 
brief tale demands, of one who would reach 
the foremost skill in it, two or three qualities 
that are really very rare. 

It calls for visual imagination of a high 
order : the power to see the object ; to pene- 
trate to its essential nature ; to select the 
one characteristic trait by which it may be re- 
presented. A novelist informs you that his 
heroine, let us say, is seated in a chair by the 
window. He tells you what she looks like : 
her attitude, figure, hair and eyes, and so 
forth. He can do this, and very often seems 



324 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

to do it, without really seeing that individual 
woman or making us see her. His trained 
pencil merely sketches some one of the same 
general description, of about the equivalent 
hair and eyes, and so forth, seated by that 
general kind of window. If he does not suc- 
ceed in making her real to us in that pose, 
he has a hundred other opportunities before 
the novel ends. Recall how George Eliot 
pictures Dorothea in " Middlemarch," now 
in this position, now in that. If one scene 
does not present her vividly to us, the chances 
are that another will, and in the end, it is 
true, we have an absolutely distinct image 
of her. The short story writer, on the other 
hand, has but the one chance. His task, 
compared with that of the novelist, is like 
bringing down a flying bird with one bullet, 
instead of banging away with a whole hand- 
ful of birdshot and having another barrel in 
reserve. Study the descriptive epithets in 
Stevenson's short stories. How they bring 
down the object ! What an eye ! And 
what a hand ! No adjective that does not 
paint a picture or record a judgment ! And 
if it were not for a boyish habit of showing 
off his skill and doing trick shots for us out 



THE SHORT STORY 325 

of mere superfluity of cleverness, what judge 
of marksmanship would refuse Master Kobert 
Louis Stevenson the prize ? 

An imagination that penetrates 
to the very heart of the matter ; a 
verbal magic that recreates for us what the 
imagination has seen, — these are the tests 
of the tale-teller's genius. A novel may be 
high up in the second rank — like Trollope's 
and Bulwer-Lytton's — and lack somehow the 
literary touch. But the only short stories 
that survive the year or the decade are those 
that have this verbal finish, — " fame's great 
antiseptic, style." To say that a short story 
at its best should have imagination and style 
is simple enough. To hunt through the 
magazines of any given month and find such 
a story is a very different matter. Out of 
the hundreds of stories printed every week in 
every civilized country, why do so few meet 
the supreme tests? To put it bluntly, does 
this form of literature present peculiar attrac- 
tions to mediocrity ? 

For answer, let us look at some what it fails 
of the qualities which the short JiJSSd : 
story fails to demand from those power - 
who use it. It will account in part for the 
number of short stories written. 



326 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

Very obviously, to write a short story 
requires no sustained power of imagination. 
So accomplished a critic as Mr. Henry 
James believes that this is a purely artificial 
distinction ; he thinks that if you can im- 
agine at all, you can keep it up. Rus- 
kin went even farther. Every feat of the 
imagination, he declared, is easy for the 
man who performs it : the great feat is pos- 
sible only to the great artist ; yet if he can do 
it at all, he can do it easily. But as a mat- 
ter of fact, does not the power required to 
hold steadily before you your theme and per- 
sonages and the whole little world where 
the story moves correspond somewhat to the 
strength it takes to hold out a dumb-bell ? 
Any one can do it for a few seconds ; but in 
a few more seconds the arm sags ; it is only 
**the trained athlete who can endure even to 
the minute's end. For Hawthorne to hold 
the people of " The Scarlet Letter " steadily 
in focus from November to February, to 
say nothing of six years' preliminary brood- 
ing, is surely more of an artistic feat than to 
write a short story between Tuesday and Fri- 
day. The three years and nine months of 
unremitting labor devoted to "Middlemarch " 



THE SHORT STORY 327 

does not in itself afford any criterion of the 
value of the book ; but given George Eliot's 
brain power and artistic instinct to begin 
with, and then concentrate them for that pe- 
riod upon a single theme, and it is no wonder 
that the result is a masterpiece. " Jan van 
Eyck was never in a hurry/' says Charles 
Keade of the great Flemish painter in " The 
Cloister and the Hearth/' — " Jan van Eyck 
was never in a hurry, and therefore the world 
will not forget him in a hurry." This sus- 
tained power of imagination, and the patient 
workmanship that keeps pace with it, are not 
demanded by the brief tale. It is a short 
distance race, and any one can run it indif- 
ferently well. 

Nor does the short story demand 
of its author essential sanity, 
breadth, and tolerance of view. How morbid 
does the genius of a Hoffmann, a Poe, a Mau- 
passant seem when placed alongside the sane 
and wholesome art of Scott and Fielding and 
Thackeray ! Sanity, balance, naturalness ; 
the novel stands or falls, in the long run, by 
these tests. But your short story writer may 
be fit for a madhouse and yet compose tales 
that shall be immortal. In other words, we 



328 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

do not ask of him that he shall have a phi- 
losophy of life, in any broad, complete sense. 
It may be that Professor Masson, like a true 
Scotchman, insisted too much upon the intel- 
lectual element in the art of fiction when he 
declared, " Every artist is a thinker whether 
he knows it or not, and ultimately no artist 
will be found greater as an artist than he was 
as a thinker." But he points out here what 
must be the last of the distinctions we have 
drawn between the short story and the novel. 
When we read " Old Mortality," or " Pen- 
dennis," or " Daniel Deronda," we find in 
each book a certain philosophy, " a chart or 
plan of human life." Consciously or uncon- 
sciously held or formulated, it is nevertheless 
there. The novelist has his theory of this 
general scheme of things which enfolds us 
all, and he cannot write his novel without be- 
traying his theory. " He is a thinker whether 
he knows it or not." 

Deals with But the short story writer, with all 

fragments. reS p e ct to him, need be nothing of 
the sort. He deals not with wholes, but with 
fragments ; not with the trend of the great 
march through the wide world, but with some 
particular aspect of the procession as it passes. 



THE SHORT STORY 329 

His story may be, as we have seen, the merest 
sketch of a face, a comic attitude, a tragic 
incident ; it may be a lovely dream, or a hor- 
rid nightmare, or a page of words that haunt 
us like music. Yet he need not be consist- 
ent ; he need not think things through. One 
might almost maintain that there is more of 
an answer, implicit or explicit, to the great 
problems of human destiny in one book like 
" Vanity Fair " or " Adam Bede " than in 
all of Mr. Kipling's one hundred and sixty 
short stories taken together — and Mr. Kip- 
ling is perhaps the most gifted story-teller of 
our time. 

Does not all this throw some light Easy litera . 
upon the present popularity of the ture< 
short story with authors and public alike? 
Here is a form of literature easy to write and 
easy to read. The author is often paid as 
much for a story as he earns from the copy- 
rights of a novel, and it costs him one tenth 
the labor. The multiplication of magazines 
and other periodicals creates a constant mar- 
ket, with steadily rising prices. The quali- 
ties of imagination and style that go to the 
making of a first-rate short story are as rare 
as they ever were, but one is sometimes 



330 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

tempted to think that the great newspaper 
and magazine reading public bothers itself 
very little about either style or imagination. 
The public pays its money and takes its 
choice. And there are other than these me- 
chanical and commercial reasons why the 
short story now holds the field. It is a kind 
of writing perfectly adapted to our over- 
driven generation, which rushes from one 
task or engagement to another, and between 
times, or on the way, snatches up a story. 
Our habit of nervous concentration for a 
brief period helps us indeed to crowd a great 
deal of pleasure into the half -hour of peru- 
sal ; our incapacity for prolonged attention 
forces the author to keep within that limit, 
or exceed it at his peril. 
Affecting It nas heen frequently declared 

other forms. ^^ ^ popu l ar i tv f tne gnorfc 

story is unfavorable to other forms of imagi- 
native literature. Many English critics have 
pointed out that the reaction against the 
three-volume novel, and particularly against 
George Eliot, has been caused by the univer- 
sal passion for the short story. And the 
short story is frequently made responsible for 
the alleged distaste of Americans for the 



THE SHORT STORY 331 

essay. We are told that nobody reads mag- 
azine poetry, because the short stories are so 
much more interesting. 

In the presence of all such brisk Does anyl)0(ly 
generalizations, it is prudent to ex- know? 
ercise a little wholesome skepticism. No one 
really knows. Each critic can easily find the 
sort of facts he is looking for. American 
short stories have probably trained the public 
to a certain expectation of technical excel- 
lence in narrative which has forced American 
novel-writers to do more careful work. But 
there are few of our novel-writers who exhibit 
a breadth and power commensurate with their 
opportunities, and it is precisely these quali- 
ties of breadth and power which an appren- 
ticeship to the art of short story writing 
seldom or never seems to impart. The wider 
truth, after all, is that literary criticism has 
no apparatus delicate enough to measure the 
currents, the depths and the tideways, the 
reactions and interactions of literary forms. 
Essays upon the evolution of literary types, 
when written by men like M. Brunetiere, 
are fascinating reading, and for the moment 
dmost persuade you that there is such a 
ring as a real evolution of types, that is, 



332 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

a definite replacement of a lower form by a 
higher. But the popular caprice of an 
hour upsets all your theories. Mr. Howells 
had no sooner proved, a few years ago, that 
a certain form of realism was the finally 
evolved type in fiction, than the great read- 
ing public promptly turned around and bought 
" Treasure Island." That does not prove 
" Treasure Island" a better story than " Silas 
Lapham ; " it proves simply that a trout that 
will rise to a brown hackle to-day will look 
at nothing but a white miller to-morrow ; and 
that when the men of the ice age grew tired 
of realistic anecdotes somebody yawned and 
poked the fire and called on a romanticist. 
One age, one stage of culture, one mood, calls 
for stories as naive, as grim and primitive in 
their stark savagery as an Icelandic saga ; 
another age, another mood, — nay, the whim 
that changes in each one of us between morn- 
ing and evening, — chooses stories as delib- 
erately, consciously artificial as " The Fall of 
the House of Usher." Both types are ad- 
mirable, each in its own way, provided both 
stir the imagination. For the types will 
come and go and come again ; but the human 
hunger for fiction of some sort is never sated. 



THE SHORT STORY 333 

Study the historical phases of the art of fiction 
as closely as one may, there come moments 

— and perhaps the close of an essay is an 
appropriate time to confess it — when one is 
tempted to say with Wilkie Collins that the 
whole art of fiction can be summed up in 
three precepts : " Make 'em laugh ; make 'em 
cry ; make 'em wait." 

The important thing, the really The wonder _ 
suggestive and touching and won- worl<L 
derful thing, is that all these thousands of 
contemporary and ephemeral stories are 
laughed over and cried over and waited for 
by somebody. They are read, while the 
" large still books " are bound in full calf and 
buried. Do you remember Pomona in " Kud- 
der Grange " reading aloud in the kitchen 
every night after she had washed the dishes, 
spelling out with blundering tongue and 
beating heart : " Yell — after — yell — re- 
sounded — as — he — wildly — sprang," — or 
" Ha — ha — Lord — Marmont — thundered 

— thou — too — shalt — suffer " ? We are 
all more or less like Pomona. We are chil- 
dren at bottom, after all is said, children un- 
der the story-teller's charm. Nansen's stout- 
hearted comrades tell stories to one another 



334 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

while the Arctic ice drifts onward with the 
Fram ; Stevenson is nicknamed The Tale- 
Teller by the brown-limbed Samoans ; Chi- 
nese Gordon reads a story while waiting — 
hopelessly waiting — at Khartoum. What 
matter who performs the miracle that opens 
for us the doors of the wonder-world? It 
may be one of that white-bearded company at 
the gate of Jaffa ; it may be an ardent French 
boy pouring out his heart along the bottom 
of a Paris newspaper; it may be some sober- 
suited New England woman in the decorous 
pages of " The Atlantic Monthly ; " it may 
be some wretched scribbler writing for his 
supper. No matter, if only the miracle is 
wrought ; if we look out with new eyes upon 
the many-featured, habitable world; if we 
are thrilled by the pity and the beauty of this 
life of ours, itself brief as a tale that is told ; 
if we learn to know men and women better, 
and to love them more. 



CHAPTEE XIII 

PRESENT TENDENCIES OF AMERICAN FIC- 
TION. 

" The literature of a people should be the record of its joyg 
and sorrows, its aspirations and its shortcomings, its wisdom and 
its folly, the confidant of its soul. We cannot say that our own 
as yet suffices us, but I believe that he who stands, a hundred 
years hence, where I am standing now, conscious that he speaks 
to the most powerful and prosperous community ever devised or 
developed by man, will speak of our literature with the assur- 
ance of one who beholds what we hope for and aspire after, be- 
come a reality and a possession forever." 

James Russell Lowell, Our Literature. (1889.) 

" Democracy in literature, as exemplified by the two great 
modern democrats in letters, Whitman and Tolstoi, means a new 
and more deeply religious way of looking at mankind, as well 
as at all the facts and objects of the visible world. It means, 
furthermore, the finding of new artistic motives and values in 
the people, in science and the modern spirit, in liberty, frater- 
nity, equality, in the materialism and industrialism of man's life 
as we know it in our day and land — the carrying into imagina- 
tive fields the quality of common humanity, that which it shares 
with real things and with all open-air nature, with hunters, farm- 
ers, sailors, and real workers in all fields." 

John Burroughs, Democracy and Literature. 

In concluding this study of the _ , , 

° J Difficulties 

art of prose fiction, let me attempt of an adequate 

p . survey. 

a survey oi the present tendencies 



336 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

of the fiction of our own country. It goes 
without saying that such a survey presents 
difficulties of no ordinary kind. The field 
at which one must glance is so vast, the varie- 
ties of production are so numerous, the charac- 
teristics of the phenomena to be examined so 
changeable in their nature from year to year, 
that anything like an exact appreciation of 
our national fiction is out of the question. 
One must content himself with suggestions, 
rather than with any detailed exposition ; 
with a statement of some of the conditions 
that enter into the question, rather than with 
any elaborate attempt at reaching a fixed 
formula. 

a knowledge O ne danger should be avoided 
of the past. at t k e outset — a d an ger never so 

insistent in its pressure as at present — the 
danger, namely, of being too contempora- 
neous in one's point of view. Even in trying 
to take account of contemporary tendencies, 
a historic sense is the most valuable equipment 
for the task of criticism. A knowledge of 
what has been already accomplished in the 
world of fiction is essential if one is to have 
any sense of perspective, any power of valu- 
ing new claimants to the honors of the craft. 



TENDENCIES OF AMERICAN FICTION 337 

The heavens are full of literary comets in 
these days, and their course can be measured 
only by reference to the fixed stars. Those 
trite sentences of advice to young readers, 
" When a new book comes out, read an old 
one," " Bead no book until it is fifty years 
old," were never more applicable than now, 
and in the field of fiction. The multiplica- 
tion of periodicals issued in the interest of 
publishing houses, and for very practical 
reasons devoted to the glorification of new 
writers more or less at the expense of old 
ones, the personal gossip about the literary 
heroes of the hour, tend to confuse all one's 
ideas of proportion. A people gifted, like 
ourselves, with a sense of humor will sooner 
or later discount the extravagant adjectives 
used in the commercial exploitation of new 
books. But meanwhile there is a mischief 
in it all ; and the mischief is that the mind 
of the reading public is systematically jour- 
nalized. The little men, by dint of keeping 
their names before us, pass in many quarters 
for great men. The historic sense is bewil- 
dered, benumbed ; and when we attempt an 
appreciation of fiction- writers and of the art 
of fiction itself our opinions are sadly con- 
temporaneous. 



338 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

Go back Before our judgment of a cur- 

fifty years. ren ^ k 00 k or a current tendency 

can have any particular value, we must un- 
derstand the work of American novelists for 
at least the last half century. And it is a 
somewhat curious fact that if we wish to 
point to American fiction-writers who have 
won a secure place in the world's literature, 
we must go back fifty years or more to find 
our men. When an intelligent foreign critic 
asks us what writers of fiction America has 
to show, of quality and force worthy to be 
compared with the masters of the art else- 
where, whom can we name? Fenimore 
Cooper for one : the author of " The Leather 
Stocking Tales," " The Spy," and " The 
Pilot ; " the creator of Natty Bumppo, and 
Chingachgook, and Long Tom Coffin. His 
rank is unquestioned. And so is the rank 
of Nathaniel Hawthorne, who has a reserved 
seat for immortality if any one has. And 
there is a third candidate for universal hon- 
ors, a short story writer, Edgar Allan Poe. 
Hawthorne, Cooper, Poe ; these men are be- 
yond the need and the reach of literary log- 
rolling. 



TENDENCIES OF AMERICAN FICTION 339 

But when we have mentioned The otJier 
these three Americans, we have names " 
nearly or quite exhausted, not indeed our 
riches in native fiction, but the roll-call of 
those who by common consent have won 
through the art of fiction a permanent fame. 
Irving' s reputation is rather that of an essay- 
ist, pioneer in a certain field of fiction though 
he was. One would hesitate to place beside 
the names of Cooper, Hawthorne, and Poe 
the name of the author of " Uncle Tom's 
Cabin," although no American book has ever 
had so wide a vogue in other countries, or 
wakened such intense emotion in our own. 
Bret Harte would have some suffrages, no 
doubt ; and many a critic would linger in- 
quiringly and affectionately over the names 
of Mark Twain, Howells, Aldrich, Stockton, 
James, Cable, Crawford, and many another 
living writer of admirable workmanship and 
honorable rank. But I suppose that there 
are few critics who would deliberately select 
among these later men a fourth to be placed 
in equality of universal recognition with that 
great trio who more than half a century ago 
were in the fullness of their power. 






340 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

Quantity and However, three such men are 
auaiity. enough to give distinction to the 

first hundred years of American fiction-writ- 
ing. If we institute a comparison in quality 
between American and English and Conti- 
nental fiction, we have simply to point to 
Hawthorne alone. In bulk his contribution 
to the world's pleasure in the form of books 
is slender when set alongside the volumes of 
Scott or Dickens or Dumas, but in point of 
quality the quiet New Englander is easily the 
peer of the greatest story-writers of the 
world. Even when judged by the more un- 
satisfactory test of quantity of production, 
American fiction can nearly or quite hold its 
own with the fiction of England, France, or 
Germany. The figures of the book market, 
while interesting enough to the curious 
minded, are vitiated, for one who is trying to 
estimate the American output of fiction, by 
the fact of the immense circulation of some 
novels which are literature only by courtesy, 
but which affect statistics just as much as if 
they were literature. If we apply the test of 
mere quantity of production, we must take 
into account not only all these books that 
are "borderland dwellers" between literature 



TENDENCIES OF AMERICAN FICTION 341 

and non-literature, but an immense supply of 
fiction that does not even pretend to be lit- 
erature any more than a clever space-reporter 
for a Sunday newspaper pretends that his 
work is literature. But putting all such 
books aside, it is still possible to select twenty 
or twenty-five American story- writers of the 
past forty years who have published enough 
good books to place American fiction well 
alongside of American poetry, and certainly 
far in advance of American music, painting, 
sculpture, or architecture. 

From this body of work is it pos- p reV aient 
sible to draw any conclusions as to nov^rttte 
the character of our fiction ? Can soiL 
we indicate the tendencies which have been 
prevalent in the past, which are now oper- 
ative, and which consequently are likely to 
characterize to a greater or less extent the 
American novel of the future ? There are 
at least three tendencies to which attention 
should be drawn. I cannot do better than 
follow here the suggestions of Professor 
Richardson, 1 who thinks that the first is the 
production of novels of the soil, that is, the 

1 Charles F. Richardson, American Literature. 2 vols. 
New York : Putnam, 1889. 



342 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

presentation of American types and scenes. 
The service of Fenimore Cooper in this direc- 
tion was a most important one. Before his 
time, Brockden Brown, for instance, had 
treated American themes, yet in so romantic a 
fashion as to disguise the reality. But Feni- 
more Cooper's backwoodsmen and sailors and 
frontier landscapes have the verity of nature 
herself. Hawthorne, too, did for New Eng- 
land, by very different methods, but with an 
equal honesty of rendering, what Cooper did 
for northern New York. Before the war, 
notes Professor Richardson, there were few 
attempts to delineate American home life in 
the various sections of the country ; but the 
improvement in American minor fiction since 
1861 is largely owing to the attempt to de- 
scribe American lif e as it is. This tendency 
is growing more and more marked with every 
year ; it is very little, if at all, affected by the 
present revival of romanticism ; it has been 
helped, rather than hindered, by the sudden 
crop of historical novels. If every American 
county has not its novelist, its painter of 
manners, — as Scotland is said to have had, 
— at least every state can show fiction- writ- 
ers who aim to delineate local conditions as 



TENDENCIES OF AMERICAN FICTION 343 

faithfully as they may, and there is every 
reason for thinking that this movement will 
be permanent. 

A second characteristic which 

. Excellence In 

has hitherto marked American nc- a limited 
tion, and one that follows closely 
upon the first, is its excellence in a limited 
field, rather than any largeness of creative 
activity. The qualities which a foreign critic 
would be inclined to postulate theoretically 
about our fiction, reasoning from our im- 
mense territory, our still youthful zest, our 
boundless faith in ourselves, our resources, 
— in short, the general " bigness " of things 
American, — are precisely the qualities which 
our fiction has hitherto lacked. Instead of 
fertility of resource, consciousness of power, 
great canvases, broad strokes, brilliant color- 
ing, we find a predominance of small canvases, 
minute though admirable detail, neutral tints, 
an almost academic restraint, a consciousness 
of painting under the critic's eye. Ameri- 
can fiction lacks breadth and power. What 
Walt Whitman tried, with very imperfect 
success one must admit, to do in the field of 
" All- American " poetry, if I may use the 
phrase, no one has even attempted to do in 



344 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

fiction. Some magazine critics have expressed 
the opinion that the cause of this is to be 
found in the fact that the conventional stand- 
ards, the critical atmosphere, of the effete At- 
lantic seaboard have hitherto been dominant 
in our literature. They profess to believe 
that when the " literary centre " of the coun- 
try is established at Chicago, or Indianapolis, 
or thereabouts, our fiction will assume a scale 
proportionate to the bigness of our continent. 
But this matter is not so simple as it looks, 
and the question whether excellence in a 
small way rather than largeness of creative 
activity will continue to characterize Ameri- 
can fiction is still to be solved. We may 
find some light thrown upon it in considering 
the relation of sectional to national fiction. 

Fundamental A tWrd f aCt "^pressed upon the 

morality. student of the American novel is 
its fundamental morality. It is optimistic. 
Its outlook upon life is wholesome. The 
stain] of doubtful morality or flaring immo- 
rality" which has often tinged English and Con- 
tinental fiction, and made both the English 
and the American stage at times unspeakably 
foul, has left scarcely any imprint as yet upon 
the better known American story-writers. 



TENDENCIES OF AMERICAN FICTION 345 

Our greater magazines have remained for the 
most part unsoiled. Bad as our " yellow " 
newspapers are, brazen as our stage often is, 
people who want the sex-novel, and want it 
prepared with any literary skill, have to import 
it from across the water. The outlook for 
the morality of the distinctively American 
novel seems assured. If our professional 
novelists have, in the last five years, withstood 
the temptation to win notoriety and money by 
risque books, we can confidently say of the 
American fiction of the future, that while it 
may not be national, and may not be great, 
it will have at least the negative virtue of 
being clean. 

We are now in a position to esti- 

! -, . . i«i 1 The " re P r 6- 

mate the conditions which must be sentative" 
met by an American writer who 
hopes that his books may be in some true 
sense representative of the national life. 
Why does not the " great American novel" 
which we talk about, and about which we 
prophesy, get itself written ? One difficulty 
in the path of the representative American 
novel has already been pointed out indi- 
rectly. It lies in the immensity of the field 



346 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

to be covered; the complexity of the phenom- 
ena which literature must interpret ; the 
mixture of races, customs, traditions, beliefs, 
ideals, upon this continent. We are a united 
nation, and have never been more conscious 
of the national life and more proud of it than 
since the twentieth century began its course. 
But literature is an affair of race as well as 
of nationality. Study the variety of names 
upon the signboards of any city ; watch the 
varying racial types in the faces of your fel- 
low citizens as you travel east or west, north 
or south. Who can be an adequate spokes- 
man for all this ? Homer is Greece, but 
Greece was a hand's breadth in comparison 
with us ; Dante is Florence, a single city ; 
Moliere, Paris, another city ; even Shakespeare, 
the " myriad-minded," was the spokesman of 
but one little island, though that was the 
England of Elizabeth. But the truth is that 
not one of these men was probably conscious 
of speaking for his country and his time. It 
is only a Balzac, a sort of gigantic child, who 
dares to set himself deliberately to the task 
of representing all France, and thereby the 
entire Human Comedy. As civilization wid- 
ens, as more and more subtle differentiations 



TENDENCIES OF AMERICAN FICTION 347 

make themselves manifest in society, the task 
becomes increasingly greater. In a Walt 
Whitman rhapsody a man might venture to 
speak for " these States/' but a writer of 
prose, in possession of his senses, would per- 
force decline any such prophetic function. 
Then, too, the tendency to the sectional 
production of sectional fiction, to fiction ' 
which allusion has just been made, has pre- 
vented our fiction from taking on even the 
semblance of national quality. By dint of 
keeping their eyes on the object, many of our 
best writers have studied but the narrowest 
of fields. They do not represent, or pretend 
to represent, with adequacy the entirety even 
of that limited province for which they stand 
as representative authors. We speak, for in- 
stance, of Mr. Cable, Miss Murf ree, Mr. Page, 
Mr. Allen, Miss Johnston, Mr. Harris, Miss 
King, and a half dozen more, as representa- 
tives of the South in contemporary fiction ; 
but they exhibit as many Souths as there are 
writers. Who can select any one book of 
these skilled story-tellers and say, " Here is 
the South represented through the art of 
fiction " ? Or take New England, as inter- 
preted by such excellent and such different 






348 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

writers as Mrs. Stowe, Miss Jewett, Miss 
Wilkins, Mrs. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward. 
Mrs. Stowe shows one New England, Miss 
Wilkin s another ; each is marvelously true 
to the local color selected ; but you cannot 
take " Old Town Folks " and " Deephaven " 
and " Pembroke " and " A Singular Life " 
and say " Here is New England." At best 
you can say " Here is a part of New England." 
Now if there is a difference in passing from the 
Vermont or Massachusetts of Miss Wilkins to 
the Maine of Miss Jewett, think of the dif- 
ference in passing from these to the Virginia 
of Mr. Page, the Northwest of Mr. Garland, 
the California of Bret Harte, the Alaska of 
Mr. Jack London ! If we can scarcely find 
a thoroughly representative sectional novel, 
how shall we expect a representative national 
novel ? 

international An additional element in the 
influences. denationalizing of our fiction lies 
in the fact that ours is peculiarly a day of 
international influences in literature. Com- 
munication between the book-producing coun- 
tries of the world is now so easy, the work 
of foreign authors so accessible, international 
gossip so entertaining and necessary to us, 



TENDENCIES OF AMERICAN FICTION ,349 

that it sometimes seems as if literature were 
adopting the socialists' programme of doing 
away with national lines altogether, of creat- 
ing a vast brotherhood of letters in which 
the accident of residence in Belgium or Scot- 
land or South Dakota counts for nothing. 
So far as Continental fiction makes its influ- 
ence felt in this country, it touches not so 
much the mass of readers as those who them- 
selves are producers of fiction. In some inter- 
esting statistics showing the hundred novels 
most often drawn from American public 
libraries, in the order of their popularity, 
gathered by Mr. Mabie for " The Forum " 
a few years ago, the absence of modern 
French and Russian masters from the list was 
most noticeable. The American public does 
not read Turgenieff and Tolstoi, Flaubert 
and Daudet, Bjornson and D'Annunzio so 
very much ; indeed it reads them very little. 
But wherever writers of fiction gather, it is 
names like these that are discussed. And 
even for the general public, a book's foreign 
reputation is impressive, although the book 
may be little read here. A London reputa- 
tion, particularly, may make the fortune of a 
novel on this side of the Atlantic. For all our 



350 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

talk about outgrowing colonialism, we have 
never been more colonial than at present, 
though we call this spirit cosmopolitanism. A 
very pretty essay might be written to prove 
that the much-praised cosmopolitanism of 
some of our successful young novelists is 
only a sort of varnished provincialism, the 
real fibre of it differing not so very much 
from the innocent provincialism of the man 
who comes back from his first ten weeks' trip 
abroad and tells you buoyantly that he has 
" been everywhere and seen everything." 
Genuine pro- Now a genuine provincialism, as 
vinciaiism. ^ hi s t ry of literature abundantly 
proves, is not a source of weakness. It is a 
strength. Carlyle was provincial. Scott was 
provincial. Burns and Wordsworth and Whit- 
tier were provincial. They were rooted in the 
soil, and by virtue of that they became repre- 
sentative. In our own political life, who have 
been our most truly representative men ? 
Webster, the rugged son of New Hampshire 
and Massachusetts, spoke as no other man 
spoke, "for the country and the whole coun- 
try." It was the gaunt rustic President from 
Kentucky and Illinois who has become, in 
Lowell's noble phrase, " our first American." 






TENDENCIES OF AMERICAN FICTION 351 
Perhaps these figures outside the 

| °. A representa- 

field of literature will help us to see tive man of 
the conditions for a representative 
national figure in literature. Those condi- 
tions can be met only by a powerful person- 
ality in harmony with its age. The person- 
ality must be great enough to take up into 
itself the great thoughts and feelings of its 
time, and transform them, personalize them, 
use them, and not be overwhelmed by them. 
Such a personality represents its age and 
country, not by the method of extension so 
much as by the method of intension, not by 
a wide superficial acquaintance with cities 
and with men, but by seeing deeply, and 
thinking deeply, and feeling deeply. It is 
by means of such power that Cooper and 
Hawthorne are American, as Fielding is Eng- 
lish, Victor Hugo French, and Turgenieff 
Russian. If the future grants us sufficiently 
powerful individuals, thoroughly American- 
ized, we shall have representative American 
novelists. 

A further question forces itself 

J Democracy. 

upon us, and one by no means easy 

to answer. How is our fiction to be affected 

by the vast democratic movement which is 



352 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

changing the face of society throughout the 
civilized world ? There is at the present 
moment a reaction against liberalism in 
England and upon the continent, and a corre- 
sponding reaction against republicanism here. 
These reactions are more wide-spread than at 
any time for sixty years past, but they have 
been brought about by peculiar conditions, 
and no one supposes that they will ultimately 
block the wheels of advancing democracy. 
" The people will conquer in the end," as 
Byron prophesied as long ago as 1821. Now 
how will this triumph of the people affect 
literature ? Are we to have an epoch of 
distinctively democratic art, and if we are, 
what sort of fiction can we imagine as flourish- 
ing in that epoch ? Said J. A. Symonds, in 
his essay on " Democratic Art," — 

" In past epochs the arts had a certain unconscious 
and spontaneous rapport with the nations which begat 
them, and with the central life-force of those nations 
at the moment of their flourishing. Whether that cen- 
tral energy was aristocratic, as in Hellas, or monarchic, 
as in France, or religious, as in mediaeval Europe, or 
intellectual, as in Renaissance Italy, or national, as in 
Elizabethan England, or widely diffused like a fine 
gust of popular intelligence, as in Japan, signified 
comparatively little. Art expressed what the people 



TENDENCIES OF AMERICAN FICTION 353 

had of noblest and sincerest, and was appreciated by 
the people." 

Can there be anything like this in the new 
era toward which we are hastening? Mr. 
Symonds himself was compelled to give up 
the question as at present unanswerable. 
It is undeniable that the aristocratic tradi- 
tion still holds firm in almost all the arts. 
" Kings, princesses, and the symbols of chiv- 
alry/' says the English critic Mr. Gosse, 
" are as essential to poetry as we now con- 
ceive it, as roses, stars, or nightingales," 
and he does not see what will be left if this 
romantic phraseology is done away with. 
" We shall certainly have left," retorted 
John Burroughs, " what we had before 
these aristocratic types and symbols came into 
vogue, namely, nature, life, man, God." 
But can poets and novelists find new artis- 
tic material in the people, the plain people 
who are so soon to hold the field? Walt 
Whitman declared, in a fine passage of his 
" Democratic Vistas," — 

" Literature, strictly considered, has never recog- 
nized the People, and whatever may be said, does not 
to-day. I know nothing more rare even in this coun- 
try than a fit scientific estimate and reverent appre- 



354 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

ciation of the People — of their measureless wealth of 
latent power and capacity, their vast artistic contrasts 
of lights and shades, with, in America, their entire 
reliability in emergencies, and a certain breadth of 
historic grandeur, of peace or war, far surpassing all 
the vaunted samples of book-heroes ... in all the 
records of the world." 

"The divine The question is simply this: 
average." « jj ow w fi± a r] fa e phenomena of a 

great democratic society be able to touch the 
poet or novelist imaginatively? " And I think 
no one has felt the significance of this ques- 
tion more adequately than Whitman. He 
has tried to answer it in his not very clearly 
expressed phrase about recognizing " the 
divine average." What he means by the di- 
vine average is simply the presence of the 
divine in average human beings. If we 
grant the presence of that element in the 
" average sensual man/' — an element which 
appeals to the sense of beauty and sublimity, 
which fires the imagination of the artist, — 
then democratic art is possible. Without it 
there can never be any democratic art, and 
we had better stick to kings and princesses, 
to Prisoners of Zenda and Gentlemen of 
France. But if one has read Dickens or 
George Eliot or Kipling, or any of the Ameri- 



TENDENCIES OF AMERICAN FICTION 355 

can novelists who have been faithful to the 
actual life of these United States, one knows 
that an art of fiction is even now in existence 
which does recognize the people, which re- 
veals, however imperfectly, the diviner quali- 
ties in the life of the ordinary man. 

How is the art of fiction destined Future 
to be changed as this recognition is types - 
more and more widely made ? Will the real- 
istic or romantic type of fiction be best fitted 
to the needs of the coming democracy ? Per- 
haps this question, too, cannot be answered, 
and yet one or two assertions may fairly be 
made. Democracy insists increasingly upon 
conformity to ordinary types. It is a pitiless 
leveler, whether up or down. It is fatal to 
eccentricities, to extravagant personal char- 
acteristics, in a word, to a large part of the 
field from which romantic fiction draws its 
power. Komantic types of character, as far 
as they have external marks of peculiarity, 
are probably destined to extinction. And 
our sense of wonder at outward things is 
steadily diminishing. Marvels have grown 
stale to us. We no longer gape over the 
telegraph, the telephone, the " wireless ; " we 
shall gape at the flying machine for a few 



356 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

days at longest. There will be one day no 
more unexplored corners of the world, no 
" road to Mandalay." We shall be forced 
to turn inward to discover the marvelous ; 
" Cathay and all its wonders " must be found 
in us or nowhere. The effect of all this 
upon fiction will be unmistakable. If novels 
of the outward life, of conformity to known 
facts and types, are written, they will be real- 
istic in method ; the old romantic fiction 
machinery will become the veriest lumber. 
There will come again an age of realism in 
fiction, if a fiction is desired which keeps close 
to life. We may imagine that the readers 
of that age will smile at Victor Hugo and 
praise " Middlernarch." But the history of 
literature has taught us that men have al- 
ways craved what I may call the fiction of 
compensation, the fiction that yields them 
what life cannot yield them. And as the 
inner world will then be the marvelous world, 
I imagine the fiction of compensation will 
take the form, not of adventures in South 
Seas and Dark Continents, but of the psycho- 
logical romance, pure and simple. Headers 
will then smile at u Treasure Island " and 
praise " Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." 



TENDENCIES OF AMERICAN FICTION 357 

If all this appears, as perhaps it Putnre 
well may, too fanciful a picture, let tiemes * 
us turn to the kind of subjects with which 
American novelists of the immediate future 
seem likely to occupy themselves. That 
there will be very shortly — if indeed there 
is not already — a reaction against over-pro- 
duction of Colonial, Kevolutionary, and other 
types of American historical fiction, cannot 
be doubted. But this is chiefly because the 
supply has temporarily outrun the demand. 
The story of our own ancestors and their 
struggles upon American soil will never lose 
its essential fascination when depicted, not 
by a horde of imitative weaklings, but by 
masters of the Active art. The marvelous 
epic of the settlement of the western half of 
the continent still waits an adequate reciter. 
We have had already a legion of Civil War 
stories, and yet we have not begun to see the 
wealth of material which that epoch holds 
for the true imaginative artist. The romance 
of labor, of traffic, of politics, in our strangely 
composite civilization, has been perceived by a 
few writers ; but how much is still to be told ! 

For American social life is chan- A changln g 
ging, taking account of itself before worl,L 



358 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

our eyes, readjusting itself, and a thousand 
subtle, delightful, forceful themes are thus 
laid open to the novelist. He will follow in 
the wake of all these social movements of 
the twentieth century as the sea-birds follow 
the steamer, sure of finding the fit morsel 
soon or late. But that simile is inapt ; the 
novelist is not like a creature watching the 
course of a mechanism ; he is a creature en- 
raptured with something that is itself alive, 
changing from hour to hour, unfolding, per- 
fecting itself from generation to generation. 
We talk of human nature being ever the 
same ; but nothing is falser to the facts of 
life and the process of the world's growth. 
Brute nature does remain the same. The 
ape and tiger of this hour are, so far as we 
know, exactly the same ape and tiger that 
our ancestors fought in the stone age. But 
the ape and tiger in us dies, though slowly ; 
the brute passions are not destined forever to 
sway the balance in our lives. The human 
spirit changes, widens, grows richer and more 
beautiful with the infinite years of man's 
history upon this planet. And over against 
this wonderful process of development stands 
the novelist, himself a part of it all, and yet 






TENDENCIES OF AMERICAN FICTION 359 

one of its interpreters. If, watching that 
changing human spectacle, he finds no stories 
to tell, discovers no charm or beauty or so- 
lemnity, it is not because these things are 
not there, but because his eyes are holden. 
We need have no fear that the 

Technique 

future American novelist will fail anaimagi- 
in power of expression. The tech- 
nical finish of his work is assured by the 
standard that has been already reached. 
Decade by decade one can mark the steady 
development of the American novelist in all 
that pertains to mere craftsmanship. But 
the value of his work will not turn primarily 
upon its technical excellence on the side of 
form. Cleverness of hand he will certainly 
possess ; but as I have said more than once 
already, cleverness of hand is not enough. 
If his work is to have any significant place 
in the literature of the world, he must learn 
to see and feel and think, and what he sees 
and feels and thinks will depend solely upon 
what he is himself. The " great American 
novel " will probably never be written by a 
man who suspects that he is doing anything 
of the sort. It is quite likely to come, 
as other greater things than novels come, 



360 A STUDY OF PROSE FICTION 

"without observation." You and I — Gen- 
tle Header with whom I am parting company 
— may never see it, but ultimately nothing 
is so certain as the triumph of the things of 
the spirit over the gross material forces of 
American civilization. Summer itself is not 
so sure in its coming as the imagination in 
its own time. 



APPENDIX 



APPENDIX 



SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 

The first chapter of this book gives an outline of 
the method of studying fiction which has been fol- 
lowed throughout the volume. Teachers and students 
who may desire to do further work for themselves 
along the lines here suggested, or in other fields of 
investigation, are advised to give that first chapter a 
second reading, in the light thrown upon it by the 
book as a whole. It will help them to remember the 
specific purpose of this volume, and to see the rela- 
tion between its method and that of other works to 
which the attention of the student should now be 
called. Some of my readers will be solitary students, 
free to follow any path they like into the pleasant fields 
of the theory and practice of story-writing. Others will 
be members of reading circles and clubs, where there 
is a definite although perhaps not very strenuous line 
of study mapped out in advance. Still others will, I 
hope, belong to school and college classes, bent upon 
serious endeavor to learn as much as possible about an 
art which has established its significance and value as 
an interpreter of modern life. In the bibliographies 
and other aids and suggestions for study which I shall 
now give, I have endeavored to keep in mind these 



364 APPENDIX 

varying requirements of my readers. Some of the 
work outlined is extremely elementary. But I have 
also indicated some tasks which will need the full pow- 
ers of the student. The arrangement of this supple- 
mentary work is such, however, that teachers will find 
no difficulty, I trust, in selecting from it such courses of 
reading and topical exercises as shall best suit the spe- 
cific needs of their classes. I cannot urge too strongly 
the advisability of a detailed analytic study of some 
one representative novel, and, if possible, an acquaint- 
ance with the entire production of one of the greater 
novelists, before attempting more than a bird's-eye view 
of any national fiction as a whole. The average college 
student, in particular, needs training in the analysis of 
a single work, and in steady reflection upon the pro- 
blems presented by it, far more than he needs a greater 
familiarity with the novelists of his own day. Most of 
us will remain readers of fiction all our lives long, but 
the chosen time for the serious study of fiction is in 
those golden years when we first perceive the treasures 
of thought and imagination, the breathing images of 
passionate human life, revealed to us by the novelists. 



I 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



a. Introductory : ^Esthetics. Since the method fol- 
lowed in our study is primarily that of aesthetic criti- 
cism, the student of the art of fiction should, if possi- 
ble, acquaint himself in some degree with the theory 
of the Fine Arts and their place in human life. For a 



APPENDIX 365 

general survey of the field of ^Esthetics, see the arti- 
cles " ^Esthetics," by James Sully, and " Fine Arts," by 
Sidney Colvin, in the Encyclopedia Britannica. Bald- 
win Brown's The Fine Arts (University Extension 
Manuals, Scribners) is a useful handbook. Bosanquet's 
voluminous History of Esthetic (Macmillan) is ex- 
tremely valuable to the advanced student. Most of 
the standard treatises upon iEsthetics are indicated 
in the card catalogue of any good library ; for an ex- 
tended bibliography, consult Gayley and Scott, Meth- 
ods and Materials of Literary Criticism (Ginn & Co., 
1899), Knight's Philosophy of the Beautiful (Univer- 
sity Extension Manuals), and the Appendix to Bosan- 
quet. 

b. Introductory: Poetics. After this preliminary 
survey of the field of iEsthetics, the student is recom- 
mended to acquaint himself with some of the many 
helpful discussions of poetic theory. How closely the 
field of Poetics is allied to that of Prose Fiction we 
have already seen in the second and third chapters. 
The most famous of all treatises on Poetics is that 
of Aristotle. There are many good translations ; the 
admirable one by Professor S. H. Butcher (Macmil- 
lan, 2d ed., 1898) is enriched by interpretative essays 
dealing with the disputable passages. A general bibli- 
ography for Poetics, with brief comment upon the im- 
portant treatises, will be found in Gayley and Scott. 
The article on " Poetry " by Theodore Watts in the 
Encyclopaedia Britannica is noteworthy. Gummere's 
Poetics (Ginn & Co.) is an excellent brief handbook ; 
see also his Beginnings of Poetry (Macmillan, 1901) 
and W. J. Courthope's Life in Poetry — Law in Taste 
(Macmillan, 1901). Volumes like Stedman's Nature 



366 APPENDIX 

and Elements of Poetry (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.) 
and C. C. Everett's Poetry, Comedy, and Duty (Hough- 
ton, Mifflin & Co.) are stimulating. But teachers who 
are provided with Gayley and Scott can easily make 
such reference lists as will be adapted to the needs 
and capacity of their pupils. 

That portion of the territory of Poetics which is 
occupied with the Theory of the Drama is especially 
important for the student of fiction. Useful books are 
Freytag's Technique of the Drama (Eng. trans., S. C. 
Griggs & Co.), Elizabeth Woodbridge's The Drama ; 
its Law and Technique (Allyn & Bacon), Alfred Hen- 
nequin's Art of Play Writing (Houghton, Mifflin & 
Co.), Price's Technique of the Drama (Brentano), 
Moulton's Ancient Classical Drama and Shakespeare 
as a Dramatic Artist (Macmillan). 

c. Prose Fiction : Historical. Two admirable 
sketches of the history of English prose fiction are 
Walter Raleigh's The English Novel (Scribners, 
1894) and Wilbur L. Cross's The Development of 
the English Novel (Macmillan, 1899). Dunlop's 
History of Prose Fiction (2 vols., revised edition 
by Wilson, Bohn, 1896) is a standard work of refer- 
ence. Professor David Masson's British Novelists 
and their Styles (Boston, 1859) is still a fresh and 
suggestive volume. W. E. Simonds's Introduction to 
English Fiction (D. C. Heath, 1894) is a useful hand- 
book for a preliminary survey. Consult also Bayard 
Tuckerman's History of English Prose Fiction (Put- 
nam, 1882), F. M. Warren's History of the Novel 
Previous to the Seventeenth Century (Holt, 1895), 
Jusserand's English Novel in the Time of Shake- 
speare (London, 1890), the Bibliographical Notes in 



APPENDIX 367 

the Appendix to Cross, and the Bibliography prefaced 
to the first volume of Wilson's edition of Dunlop. 

d. Prose Fiction: Philosophical and Critical. 
Suggestive discussions of general tendencies in modern 
fiction are found in F. H. Stoddard's The Evolu- 
tion of the English Novel (Macmillan, 1899), Sid- 
ney Lanier's The English Novel (Scribners, revised 
edition, 1897), D. G. Thompson's Philosophy of Fiction 
in Literature (Longmans, 1890), Zola's Le Roman 
Experimental (Eng. trans., Cassell, N. Y.), Brune- 
tiere's Le Roman Naturaliste (Paris), Spielhagen's 
Beitrage zur Theorie und Technik des Romans (Ber- 
lin), C. T. Winchester's Principles of Literary Criti- 
cism (Macmillan), Howells's Criticism and Fiction 
(Harpers), F. Marion Crawford's The Novel: What 
It Is (Macmillan), Sir Walter Besant's lecture on " The 
Art of Fiction " (Cupples, Upham & Co., Boston, 1885), 
Henry James's essay in rejoinder on " The Art of Fic- 
tion" in Partial Portraits (Macmillan), R. L. Steven- 
son's " A Humble Remonstrance " addressed to Mr. 
James (reprinted in Memories and Portraits), Bran- 
der Matthews's The Historical Novel and other Es- 
says and Aspects of Fiction (Scribners), Paul Bourget's 
" Reflexions sur l'Art du Roman " in Etudes et Por- 
traits. For younger students, Miss Charity Dye's 
The Story-Teller's Art (Ginn, 1898) is a useful book ; 
and for such pupils May Estelle Cook's Methods of 
Teaching Novels (Scott, Foresman & Co.) and Alfred 
M. Hitchcock's Journeys in Fiction (Allyn & Bacon) 
also afford profitable hints. 

e. Prose Fiction : Special Topics. Articles upon the 
various aspects of fiction have been frequent in periodi- 
cal literature, especially since 1880. For these, consult 



368 APPENDIX 

Poole's Index to Periodical Literature. W. M. Gris- 
wold's Descriptive Lists of American and Foreign 
Novels (Cambridge, Mass.) is useful, as are also me 
lists of selected fiction issued by the public libraries of 
Boston, Providence, and other cities. Some of the best 
comment upon novels and novelists is to be found in 
reviews and critical articles in periodicals ; if Poole's 
Index is not at hand, the index to the periodical itself 
will often put the student upon the track of helpful 
material. Biographies of the great novelists, and their 
Notebooks and Letters, are full of suggestive comment 
upon their art. 

The footnotes to the various chapters of the present 
work give occasional references to books bearing par- 
ticularly upon the subject of each chapter; but as I 
have wished to keep the text as free as possible from 
notes, I will add here a few suggestions for special read- 
ing in connection with some of the main topics of the 
book. 

In studying chapter iii. for instance, it will be well 
to take as supplementary reading some of the books 
already mentioned under b, and especially Gummere's 
Poetics and Watts's article. For chapter iii., note 
especially Freytag, Woodbridge, and Hennequin. 

For chapter iv., note Edward Dowden's Studies in 
Literature, J. Wedgwood on " The Ethics of Liter- 
ature " in Contemporary Review, January, 1897, and 
W. J. Stillman on " The Revival of Art " in the At- 
lantic, vol. lxx. 

In connection with chapters v., vi., and vii., the most 
profitable work is a first-hand study of the practice of 
various novelists, as indicated below under II. Topics 
for Study. 



APPENDIX 369 

For chapter viii., see Ruskin's " Art and Morals " 
in Lectures on Art, D. G. Thompson, chapter xiii., 
Lanier, chapter xii., Stoddard, chapter v., John La 
Farge's Considerations on Painting, Lecture II. 
(Macmillan), Charles F. Johnson's Elements of Liter- 
ary Criticism, chapter iv. (Harpers). 

In connection with the discussion of Realism in 
chapter ix., see Howells's Criticism and Fiction, the 
chapter on Realism in W. C. Brownell's French Art 
(Scribners), ValdeYs Preface to Sister St. Sulpice 
(Crowell), and Cross, chapters v. and vi. 

Romanticism (chapter x.) is discussed in many recent 
volumes, such as the books of Beers and Phelps referred 
to on page 262. See also Pater's essay in the Postscript 
of Appreciations, F. H. Hedge's article in the Atlantic, 
vol. lvii., T. S. Omond's The Triumph of Romance 
(Scribners), W. P. Ker's Epic and Romance (Mac- 
millan), and consult the Bibliography furnished by 
Professor Beers. 

For chapter xi., see the references in the text to 
Minto, Clark, Gardner, Brewster, and Baldwin, and the 
critical essays of James, Stevenson, Brunetiere, Bour- 
get, and other acute contemporary students of literary 
form. 

For chapter xii., compare Poe's criticism of Haw- 
thorne in Graham's Magazine, 1842 (in vol. vii. of 
the Stedman-Woodberry edition ; Stone & Kimball), 
Brand er Matthews's The Philosophy of the Short- 
Story (Longmans, 1901), C. R. Barrett's Short Story 
Writing (Baker and Taylor), Sherwin Cody's The 
World's Greatest Short Stories (McClurg, 1902), 
G. S. Nettleton's Specimens of the Short Story 
(Holt), W. M. Hart's Hawthorne and the Short 



370 APPENDIX 

Story (Berkeley, Cal., 1900), and H. S. Canby's " The 
Short Story " {Yale Studies in English ; Holt, 1902). 

For chapter xiii., see Walt Whitman's " Demo- 
cratic Vistas," Lowell's address on " Democracy," 
J. A. Symonds's " Democratic Literature " in Essays 
Speculative and Suggestive, W. H. Crawshaw's Lit- 
erary Interpretation of Life, chapters v.-vii. (Mac- 
millan), C. F. Richardson's American Literature 
vol. ii. (Putnam, 1889), W. C Bronson's Short His- 
tory of American Literature (Heath, 1901), Barrett 
Wendell's History of Literature in America (Scrib- 
ners, 1901), and A. G. Newcomer's American Litera- 
ture (Scott, Foresman & Co., 1901). 

/. Representative English Novels. To students de- 
siring to understand the historical development of 
English fiction in its main outlines, the following list 
of typical productions is suggested : Sir Philip Sid- 
ney's Arcadia (1590), Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress 
(1678-84), Swift's Tale of a Tub (1704), Defoe's 
Captain Singleton (1720), Richardson's Pamela 
(1740), Fielding's Amelia (1751), Goldsmith's Vicar 
of Wakefield (1766), Ann Radcliffe's Mysteries of 
Udolpho (1794), Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice 
(1812), Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe (1820), Charlotte 
Bronte's Jane Eyre (1847), Thackeray's Vanity Fair 
(1847-48), Dickens's David Copperfield (1849-50), 
Trollope's Bar Chester Towers (1857), George Eliot's 
Middlemarch (1871-72), Stevenson's Treasure Island 
(1883). 

g. Representative American Novels. The follow- 
ing stories are fairly representative of the tendencies 
of American fiction : Brockden Brown's Wieland 
(1798), Irving's Sketch Book (1819), Cooper's Last of 



APPENDIX 371 

the Mohicans (1826), Poe's Tales of the Grotesque 
and Arabesque (1839), Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter 
(1850), Mrs. Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), 
Bret Harte's Luck of Roaring Camp (1870), Eggles- 
ton's Hoosier Schoolmaster (1871), Clemens's [Mark 
Twain] Tom Sawyer (1876), Henry James's The 
American (1877), Howells's Rise of Silas Lapham 
(1885), Cable's Grandissimes (1880), Miss Wilkins's 
Humble Romance (1887), Weir Mitchell's Hugh 
Wynne (1897), Owen Wister's The Virginian (1902). 



II 



TOPICS FOR STUDY 

It cannot be emphasized too often that the aim of 
this Study of Prose Fiction is to help students to use 
their own eyes and minds. Topics for independent 
study may be assigned in connection with almost all 
the chapters in the book, but v., vi., and vii. are par- 
ticularly well adapted for this kind of work. For in- 
stance, the student may be asked to write a brief paper, 
as the result of independent study in any author, of 
one or more of the following topics : — 

1. Character- Studies. (See chapter v.) 

A character embodying but one quality or passion. 
A complex character with one trait in predominance. 
A complex character consisting of evenly balanced 
opposing forces. A character involved in a conscious 
moral struggle, successful or otherwise ; in an uncon- 
scious moral struggle. Deterioration, with or without 
a struggle. A character developing under prosperity ; 



372 APPENDIX 

adversity; old age; influence of other personalities; 
of religion, art, philosophy. A character illustrating 
professional, class, or national traits. A character ful- 
filling the requirements of its role as villain, lover, 
heroine, etc. A "plot-ridden " character. Character- 
contrasts : in the family ; among friends ; in wider 
relations. Character-grouping . as regards the unify- 
ing principle, subordination of parts, place in the book 
as a whole. 

2. Studies in Plot. (See chapter vi.) 

An incident as revealing character. A situation as 
determining character. A climax in its relation to 
the theme. A catastrophe as poetic justice ; as illus- 
trative of the individual philosophy of the writer ; as 
unsatisfactory to the reader. Plot complication and 
resolution as dictated by character. Accident as a 
complicating force; a resolving force. Fate as a re- 
solving force. Mystification in plot. Anticlimax in 
plot. Plot as determined by the characters. Sustain- 
ing of plot-interest. A perfect plot. A sub-plot as 
reflecting, depending upon, or artificially joined to the 
main plot. A plot as influenced by the setting. 

3. Studies in Setting. (See chapter vii.) 

A given novel as illustrating the time and place of 
its setting; for instance, the Egyptian, Oriental, Greek, 
Roman, or mediaeval world. The setting of a novel 
whose scenes are laid in a part of America with which 
you are personally familiar ; for instance, a Tennessee, 
Virginia, New York, New England, California story. 
A setting making artistic use of one of the great occu- 
pations of men : as politics, war, commerce, manufac- 



APPENDIX 373 

turing, farming, mining, travel, student life, life of the 
unemployed poor, the unemployed rich. A setting fur- 
nished by institutions or ideas prevalent in society : as 
feudalism, democracy, socialism, patriotism, religion. 
The sea, the mountains, the city, the village, the coun- 
try, as setting for a given story. A landscape setting 
which harmonizes with the characters ; contrasts with 
the characters ; affects the incidents ; determines the 
situations ; gives unity to the book. 



Ill 



ORIGINAL WORK IN CONSTRUCTION 

This book is not designed, of course, to give training 
to " young writers " in practical craftsmanship. But it 
is often a stimulus to the intelligent and sympathetic 
reading of fiction to attempt for one's self some of the 
practical problems with which novelists are constantly 
called upon to deal. For class-room work, in partic- 
ular, some such exercises as the following will be found 
interesting : — 

1. Read the opening chapters of any novel until you 
feel sure that the main characters are all introduced ; 
then block out a plot which shall accord with your view 
of the characters. 

2. Read until the complication is well advanced ; then 
block out the remainder of the plot. 

3. Read until you are sure the catastrophe is immi- 
nent ; then sketch in detail a catastrophe which shall 
harmonize with the foregoing plot. 

4. Construct a diagram of a plot involving but two 
or three persons, indicating the lines of complication, 
the climax or turning point, and the ddnoument. 



374 APPENDIX 

5. Construct a similar diagram, indicating the situ- 
ations or steps by which the action advances to the cli- 
max, and thence to the catastrophe. 

6. Describe a room or a house so that each detail 
shall serve to indicate the character of the occupant. 

7. Write a conversation which indirectly reveals a 
character; describe an action which directly reveals a 
character. 

8. Describe an important situation, sketching briefly 
the antecedent and subsequent plot-movement. 

9. Write a closing chapter, indicating the steps by 
which it is reached. 

10. Describe a group of characters suitable for a 
sub-plot, with the briefest indication of their connec- 
tion with the main plot. 



IV 



PRACTICE IN ANALYSIS 

In studying representative novels, whether in the 
class-room or by one's self, it is well to read with pen- 
cil in hand, and to endeavor to sum up, as clearly as 
possible, the outline of the story, as regards plot, char- 
acters, and design. A simple method of analysis is 
here given, as applied to Thackeray's Vanity Fair. 

Vanity Fair. 

I. Aim. Where did Thackeray get his title ? What 
light is thrown by the title, the author's preface, and 
the references to Vanity Fair throughout the novel, 
upon the aim and spirit of the book ? In other words, 
what is Thackeray trying to do ? 

II. (a) Characters. Fiction exhibits characters in 



APPENDIX . 375 

action, by means of narration and description. Study 
the opening chapters of Vanity Fair with the aim of 
getting a clear conception of the characters there pre- 
sented, before the complication of the story really 
begins. 

(b) Plot. After doing this we must study the char- 
acters as they are thrown together, influenced by one 
another, and developed by means of the action. It 
will therefore be necessary, before examining the char- 
acters in complication with one another, to trace the 
action, or plot, of the novel. The plot of Vanity 
Fair may, for convenience, be summarized under seven 
divisions. 

1. Introduction. (Chapters 1-11, inclusive.) The 
opening six chapters are concerned with Amelia, Re- 
becca, the Osbornes, the Sedleys, and Dobbin ; the next 
five chapters describe the Crawleys. 

2. Development. (12-26.) This division treats mainly 
of Miss Crawley, Rebecca's conquests, the Sedley failure, 
Dobbin's affection for Amelia, and George Osborne's 
disinheritance. 

3. The Waterloo Campaign. (27-32.) Here is the 
first great crisis of the book. Its significance in the 
plot, aside from George Osborne's death, lies in its 
definite revelations of character, particularly of Joseph 
Sedley, Dobbin, and Rebecca. 

4. Struggles and Trials. (33-46.) This division cov- 
ers many years of time. Rebecca is successfully fight- 
ing her way up in the world, and Amelia is struggling 
vainly against poverty. Chapter 39 is important as 
affecting Rebecca's position. Note that chapter 37 
prepares the way for division 5, just as chapter 43 is 
a preparation for division 6. 



376 - APPENDIX 

5. Lord Steyne. (47-55.) Here is the second and 
greatest crisis of the story. It contains the culmination 
of Rebecca's success, and the catastrophe. Chapter 50 
is inserted here to show the lowest point of Amelia's 
fortunes. 

6. Our Friend the Major. (56-61.) The re-intro- 
duction of two characters, and the deaths of two others, 
mark the turning point in Amelia's struggles, just as 
division 5 shows the turn in Rebecca's. 

7. Denoument. Note Rebecca's degradation, her tem- 
porary influence over Amelia, Dobbin's departure, re- 
call, and marriage, the end of Joseph Sedley, and 
Rebecca's final position in the world. 

(c) Setting. Having mastered the plot, in its main 
and subordinate features, it will be well to review defi- 
nitely the circumstances of time and place in which 
the action is laid ; as for instance, London life in the 
period 1814-30, Queen's Crawley under Sir Pitt, 
Brussels in 1815, the Rawdon Crawley establishment 
in Curzon Street, Gaunt House, or the town of Pum- 
pernickel. Be able to reproduce this historical and 
local setting as far as possible. 

(d) Review each character, first by itself, then in 
contrast with the other characters with which it is 
most closely grouped, and determine lastly what is the 
function of each character in the plot as a whole. Dis- 
tinguish carefully between the characters that are un- 
modified by the action of the story, as Sir Pitt or Mrs. 
O'Dowd, and those whose development is affected by 
the action, as Rawdon Crawley or Rebecca. 

III. Style. If we understand what Thackeray aimed 
to do in writing Vanity Fair, and what he has actu- 
ally done, we are ready to criticise his manner of doing 



APPENDIX 377 

it, that is, his style. Judging from Vanity Fair alone, 
what inferences can you draw as to Thackeray's (a) cre- 
ation of character, (b) invention of plot, and (c) power 
of narration and description ; in other words, his gifts 
as a story-teller ? 



REVIEW QUESTIONS 

The questions to be asked of the student, in review- 
ing the works of fiction selected for his study, will 
naturally vary widely. The queries made by one 
teacher will not suit another at every point. But I 
have thought it worth while to give here a few examples 
of review questions, based upon such different material 
as Scott's Ivanhoe, some selected short stories of Poe 
and Hawthorne, and George Eliot's Middlemarch. 
They may serve as hints for better questions, if nothing 
more. 

a. Ivanhoe. 1 

I. The function of the opening chapter of a novel 
is ordinarily to give a picture of the time or place in 
which the story is to move, or to introduce some of the 
minor — occasionally the leading — characters, or to 
strike the keynote of the dramatic action. If it is 
prevailingly narrative, rather than descriptive, it usually 
deals with an event from which the subsequent events 
of the book distinctly take their origin, or an event or 
scene which must be explained before the reader can 
advance into the story, or one to the explanation of 
which the entire book is to be devoted. Which of 

1 Reprinted by permission from the annotated edition of 
Ivanhoe, edited by Bliss Perry. Longmans, Green & Co., 1897. 



378 APPENDIX 

these various purposes does the first chapter of Ivan- 
hoe seem to you to fulfill ? Compare it, for effective- 
ness, with the opening chapter of Scott's earliest nov- 
els, such as Waverley and Guy Mannering ; with 
some of his later novels, such as Kenilworth and 
Quentin Durward. Study this first conversation of 
the jester and the swineherd as an example of charac- 
ter-contrast. 

II. What do you think of Scott's habit of describ- 
ing in minute detail the personal appearance of his 
characters, before he has made them reveal their na- 
ture by speech or action ? Do you recall any other 
novels in which Scott has depicted a worldly minded 
ecclesiastic ? Compare the Templar with Marmion, in 
external traits and character, as far as this chapter re- 
veals the Templar to us. Are the references to Cedric 
and Rowena, designed of course to prepare us for the 
following chapter, skillfully introduced ? 

III. Compare Cedric with other fiery old people in 
Scott's novels, as Sir Geoffrey in Peveril of the Peak, 
Baron Bradwardine in Waverley, Lady Bellenden in 
Old Mortality, and Sir Henry Lee in Woodstock. No- 
tice how his talk is designed to heighten the reader's 
interest in the coming chapter. 

IV. Note the opportunity of which Scott here avails 
himself to describe again the personal appearance of 
two of his leading characters. Does the delay in 
Rowena' s entrance add to its effectiveness ? Can you 
give a clear account, from memory, of her features 
and dress ? What is gained by having the entrance of 
a stranger announced at the very end of the chapter ? 

V. For prototypes of Isaac of York, read Shake- 
speare's Merchant of Venice and Marlowe's Jew of 



APPENDIX 379 

Malta. Can you find other strongly drawn Jewish 
figures in the drama or in fiction ? Note that the quar- 
rel between the Templar and the Palmer furnishes a 
sort of " inciting moment ; " that is, an action which 
involves and leads to the subsequent plot-movement. 
Does Rowena's loyalty to the reputation of Ivanhoe 
indicate anything as to the relation between these two 
characters ? What interest is added to the story by 
the fact that the Palmer appears obviously in disguise ? 
What other instances of disguise can you recall in 
Scott's poems and novels ? 

VI. Note how the close of this chapter, as that of 
the preceding one, is designed to stimulate the reader's 
interest in the coming tournament. Review the first 
six chapters, all of which centre in Rotherwood, and 
see if you have the characters and the plot (as thus 
far outlined) clearly in mind. Notice carefully whether 
the main characters develop as the story progresses, or 
are left stationary as regards mental and moral growth, 
as is usual with minor characters in fiction. In a ro- 
mance of adventure, is there much gained by insisting 
upon this character-development ? 

VII. Can you draw a plan of the lists from mem- 
ory of the description just given ? Note the points of 
contrast between the figures of Rebecca and Rowena 
at their first presentation to the reader. 

VIII. In connection with this chapter the descrip- 
tion of the tournament in Chaucer's Knight's Tale 
may be read with advantage. Notice the very skillful 
fashion in which Scott leads up to the entrance of the 
Disinherited Knight, and the artistic effect of " the soli- 
tary trumpet." By what various means does he secure 
the reader's sympathy for the unknown champion ? 



380 APPENDIX 

IX. What is the value, in this chapter, of the fic- 
tion-writer's privilege of explaining what is passing in 
the minds of his characters ? Can you criticise the 
dialogue in any respects ? 

X. Note the successive stages by which the manly 
character of Gurth is revealed to the reader ; also the 
effective race-contrast between him and Isaac. Is any- 
thing gained by the reference to the Knight's " per- 
plexed ruminations " which it is not now " possible to 
communicate to the. reader " ? Oan you point out any 
passages where Isaac's talk seems too rhetorical to be 
altogether natural? 

XI. The forest scene delineated in chapter xi. fur- 
nishes a sort of comic interlude, midway in the eight 
chapters that centre around the tournament at Ashby. 
What are the devices by which Scott secures our re- 
spect for Gurth and also for the outlaws ? What were 
the elements in Scott's nature, as far as you understand 
it, that would make the writing of a chapter like this 
a thoroughly congenial task to him ? 

XII. The foregoing chapter is one of the most 
famous in English fiction, and will repay the closest 
study. Note that the unlooked-for prowess of the 
Black Knight, and the discovery of the identity of the 
Disinherited Knight, furnish it with two distinct points 
of climax. In the first of these, what is gained by the 
unexpectedness of the incident ? Can you recall simi- 
lar feats of arms, as described by other novelists ? If 
you find Scott superior as a describer of such things, 
in what points does his superiority seem to you to lie ? 
Does the dropping of Ivanhoe's disguise suggest any- 
thing to you about the danger of over-using disguise as 
an element of interest in fiction? Does Scott alto- 



APPENDIX 381 

gether escape the danger in The Talisman, The Abbot, 
and elsewhere ? 

XIII. This is another very famous chapter. The 
effect of climax, in Locksley's successive shots, is in its 
way as finely artistic as Scott's management of the 
tournament in chapter xii. Study it closely. Similar 
feats of archery are described in Roger Ascham's Tox- 
ophilus (1545) and Maurice Thompson's Witchery of 
Archery. A mark like Locksley's, and an equal skill, 
is credited to various personages (Robin Hood, Clym 
of the Cleugh, William of Cloud esley) in old English 
ballads. For a discussion of these Robin Hood bal- 
lads, see Professor F. J. Child's English and Scottish 
Ballads, vol. v. Do you remember any other charac- 
ters depicted by Scott who have, like Hubert, " one set 
speech for all occasions " ? (See Woodstock, Waver- 
ley, etc.) 

XIV. Note how this chapter furnishes concrete 
illustration of those differences between Saxon and 
Norman which it was Scott's purpose to emphasize 
wherever possible. Why does Cedric's toast to Rich- 
ard increase the reader's sympathy for both of these 
characters ? 

XV. This is a good example of an intrigue chapter, 
as distinguished from one devoted to the exposition of 
character or to the depiction of a situation. Its pur- 
pose is to furnish a link between two stages of the nar- 
rative, and explain the events of the chapters immedi- 
ately succeeding. What do you think of Waldemar's 
soliloquy, as compared with similar ones in Richard 
III., Othello, etc., where the villain outlines his 
scheme ? Is a soliloquy, as such, better suited to the 
drama than to the novel ? 



382 APPENDIX 

XVI. This is another comic interlude, in Scott's 
richest vein, and is the first of five forest chapters 
which separate the Rotherwood and Ashby groups of 
chapters from the eleven chapters that deal with the 
siege of Torquilstone. For the role played by Friar 
Tuck in the Robin Hood ballads, see the previous re- 
ferences to them. Scott's fondness for exhibiting the 
human — not to say worldly — side of his clerical fig- 
ures is noticeable. Can you recall any instances of it ? 

XVII. It is only an artificial division, of course, 
which separates this chapter from the preceding one. 
From your knowledge of Scott's poetry, do you con- 
sider the songs in this chapter a fair representation of 
his skill in that field ? 

XVIII. Does the language put into Gurth's mouth 
seem to you invariably in keeping with the character ? 
Notice the relatively slight interest, whether of plot or 
characterization, that this chapter affords, and then see 
how the interest is heightened, from point to point, 
during the next two chapters. 

XIX. Note the ease and precision of the character- 
drawing here, and the rapidity of the forward move- 
ment of the story. 

XX. The reader should observe how this chapter, 
like the two preceding ones, directs the attention for- 
ward, rather than concentrates it upon the events im- 
mediately before the mind. See also the suggestions 
at the close of the last chapter. 

XXI. This is the first of the eleven consecutive 
chapters that deal with the Castle of Torquilstone. 
Observe how careful Scott is to explain the technical 
words he uses in describing it. Have you a sufficiently 
distinct picture of the castle in your mind to enable 



APPENDIX 383 

you to draw a rough sketch of its main features ? Try- 
to do so. Compare Torquilstone with similar castles 
in Scott's other novels {The Betrothed, Old Mortality, 
Quentin Durward, etc.). Mark the sharp character- 
contrast between Cedric and Athelstane. Do you think 
the author's humorous insistence upon the latter's un- 
failing gluttony is overdone ? What device, frequent 
in romantic fiction, is used just at the close of the chap- 
ter to carry forward the reader's curiosity ? 

XXII. Is Scott's portrayal of Front-de-Bceuf as a 
" heavy villain " open to criticism at any point ? For 
the mingling of paternal affection and avarice in Isaac's 
nature, compare Marlowe's Jew of Malta and Shake- 
speare's Merchant of Venice. 

XXIII. The scene between Rowena and De Bracy 
is finely conceived, and affords an artistic contrast to 
the still more admirable scene between Rebecca and 
the Templar in the succeeding chapter. What quali- 
ties possessed by Rowena fit her to be the heroine of a 
romantic tale ? Has she shown any defects, as a typi- 
cal heroine, or as a woman, up to this point ? Are 
the last four paragraphs — the inserted ones — in 
keeping with the general tone of the story ? Do you 
think the writer of a historical novel ought to bring 
forward actual proofs of the manners and facts which 
he uses in his narrative ? 

XXIV. Notice the similarity in the construction of 
the last four chapters. In each a scene involving two 
persons (Cedric and Athelstane, Isaac and Front-de- 
Bceuf, Rowena and De Bracy, Rebecca and the Tem- 
plar) is interrupted by the " blowing of the horn " out- 
side the castle. Do you think that this scheme of 
following the fortunes of the different groups up to an 



384 APPENDIX 

incident that affects them all could be bettered ? Why- 
is the scene between Rebecca and the Templar the climax 
of the four ? By what means is the contrast in char- 
acter between Rebecca and Rowena most effectively 
shown ? In the Templar's story of his own life, do you 
find any traces of the conventional Byronic hero ? 

XXV. What details in this chapter seem to you most 
characteristic of Scott ? What are some of the differ- 
ences between conversation in novels and conversation 
in actual life ? 

XXVI. In this chapter, as in the preceding one, 
observe what is gained by shifting the emphasis so that 
it falls, for a while, upon the minor characters. Is 
Scott altogether consistent in the motives he assigns for 
Wamba's conduct ? What means are used to heighten 
our respect for the moral qualities of Wamba, Cedric, 
and Athelstane, in turn ? Notice how the disguises 
furnish a new set of interests and serve as an interlude 
between the more dramatic portions of the action. 

XXVII. May this chapter fairly be criticised for 
its lack of unity ? Is the delineation of Ulrica, and the 
story she tells, unnatural at any points ? Compare her 
manner of talk with that of Mrs. Macgregor in Rob 
Roy and of Meg Merrilies in Guy Mannering. What 
speech of De Bracy, in this chapter, is most character- 
istic of him? In the discussion about the ransoms, 
study carefully the motives of each speaker. Do you 
think the haste and confusion of the latter part of the 
chapter enhance the effect of excitement and expecta- 
tion ? 

XXVIII. Do you consider the opening sentence of 
this chapter a fortunate one ? Can you recall instances, 
in the chapter, of purely conventional epithets, like Re- 



APPENDIX 385 

becca's " slender " fingers and " ruby " lips ? Of sen- 
tences arranged in reverse order to give an archaic ef- 
fect ? Of sentences recalling the rhythm of the Scrip- 
tures, or that of blank verse ? Note that De Bracy's 
" middle course between good and evil " is one that 
Scott frequently forces upon his heroes. An interest- 
ing parallel to Rebecca's conversation about Jews and 
Christians will be found in Lessing's Nathan der Weise. 

XXIX. This chapter is one of the most famous in 
the whole range of English fiction, and is an admirable 
example of Scott's power of vigorous, impassioned de- 
scription. The device of making the observer of the 
action relate it to another, who is unable to witness it, 
is at least as old as the story of Bluebeard. It has been 
skillfully employed in Rossetti's Sister Helen, Tenny- 
son's Harold (act v.), and elsewhere. 

XXX. In this death scene, and in similar passages 
elsewhere in Scott's novels, do you think the author 
lays himself open to the charge of confounding tragedy 
with melodrama? 

XXXI. This admirable chapter, the final one of the 
eleven devoted to the siege of Torquilstone, contains obvi- 
ously one of the main climaxes of the book. It will be 
well for the reader to review the characters of the story 
and the general plot-movement up to this point, with the 
aim of seeing exactly what has been accomplished and 
what still remains to be done by the author in satisfying 
the expectations that have been raised. The account of 
the capture of the castle will be most enjoyed by those 
readers who are able to form an exact picture of the 
building and its outworks. Compare the features of 
this siege with similar ones described in Old Mortality, 
Quentin Durward, Woodstock, Peveril of the Peak, 



386 APPENDIX 

and elsewhere. Is the manner of De Bracy's submis- 
sion an adequate indication of the real personality of 
the Black Knight? Observe how Scott secures our 
sympathy for all of the personages in this chapter by 
assigning to each of them some brave or chivalrous 
action. 

XXXII. The few sentences of landscape depiction, 
at the beginning of the chapter, may suggest a compari- 
son between Scott's novels and his poems as regards 
the extent to which he avails himself, in the two arts, 
of landscape effects. Distinguish carefully chapters 
like the preceding, designed to give a picture of char- 
acters in a certain mood, from chapters containing sit- 
uations or events that directly advance the plot. The 
freedom with which Scott makes his personages jest 
upon sacred subjects was sharply criticised by one re- 
viewer at the time of Ivanhoe's first appearance. Do 
you think this chapter, and the following one, are really 
at fault in this respect ? 

XXXIII. In this continuation of the comic interlude, 
begun in the preceding chapter, note the ease and skill 
with which national and professional types of character 
are contrasted with each other. The humorous situa- 
tion involved in making Isaac and the Prior fix each 
other's ransom is thoroughly characteristic of Scott. 
Mark his power of shifting sympathy from one side to 
the other, and of changing the tone of description to- 
ward the end of the chapter, as more serious interests 
again assert their claims upon the reader. 

XXXIV. In the delineation of well known historical 
figures, like Richard and John, how far do you think 
the novelist is forced to adopt the popular conception of 
the figure ? Is Scott's depiction of the natural treachery 



APPENDIX 387 

of John in accordance with all we know of that prince ? 
Compare Shakespeare's King John. In an historical 
novel, is it better that some great historical personage 
should be the leading figure, or may that place be bet- 
ter filled by a fictitious character ? Study Scott's vary- 
ing methods in The Abbot, The Talisman, Kenilworth, 
Quentin Durward, Woodstock, and elsewhere. 

XXXV. This is the first of a group of chapters, the 
scene of which is laid at Templestowe. What are some 
of the obvious advantages of a change of scene in a 
story of romantic adventure ? Observe how the reader's 
attention, in this closing period of the story, is more 
and more directed toward Rebecca. In the delinea- 
tion of the Grand Master, notice how natural it is for 
Scott to make his ecclesiastics either worldlings or 
fanatics. The same thing is to be observed in Peveril 
of the Peak, Woodstock, Old Mortality, and elsewhere. 

XXXVI. In this finely dramatic situation, note the 
precision of the character-drawing. The " scrap of pa- 
per " mentioned in the closing paragraph is one of the 
link-devices used to hold this group of chapters together. 
Do you find Scott superior or inferior to other novelists 
of high rank in the art of calculating his effects and giv- 
ing the reader hints of them a long time in advance ? 
Does what you know of Scott's method of composition 
throw any light upon this question ? 

XXXVII. It was possibly Scott's own legal training 
that made him delight in introducing trials into his 
works of fiction. Particularly interesting analogies to 
the one described in this chapter may be found in the 
account of the " Vehmegericht " in Anne of Geierstein 
and in canto ii. of Marmion. Rebecca's demand for a 
champion gives the artistic " motive " for the remain- 



388 APPENDIX 

ing chapters of the story. Do you think any irony is 
intended in her last speech about England, " the hospi- 
table, the generous, the free " ? 

XXXVIII. Study the effective contrast between the 
mental processes of the cultivated Orientals and the un- 
lettered English messenger. 

XXXIX. Note what is called " tragic elevation " 
in the dialogue, i. e. a language removed, sublimated, 
from the speech of daily life. Distinguish between 
scenes that test the moral fibre of a person when he is 
quite unconscious of any struggle (see almost every 
chapter of Scott) and scenes like the foregoing, em- 
bodying a conscious moral or spiritual struggle, which 
are comparatively rare in Scott. Contrast him, in this 
regard, with George Eliot and Hawthorne. 

XL. Note, as before, how the forest scene gives re- 
lief from the high tension of the previous chapter. 
The variety and unforced humor and dramatic situa- 
tions in this chapter can scarcely be praised too highly. 
Review the successive hints that have been given as to 
the real personality of the Black Knight and Locksley. 
Do they enhance the reader's pleasure in the scene when 
the disguises are finally thrown off ? Observe the skill 
with which the Robin Hood legends and the actual traits 
of Richard I. have here been mingled. 

XLI. In Scott's analysis of Richard's nature, and 
especially in the words " the brilliant but useless char- 
acter of a knight of romance," observe how his shrewd 
Scotch judgment offsets his sentiment. It is in this 
capacity for alternate sympathy with both sides of a 
question that much of his power as a story-teller lies. 
See Julia Wedgwood's "Ethics and Literature " in the 
Contemporary Review, January, 1897. 



APPENDIX 389 

XLII. Scott's note on the raising of Athelstane is 
the best possible comment upon his happy-go-lucky 
methods in arranging his plot. He said himself that 
he always "pushed for the pleasantest road towards 
the end of a story." As a whole, do you think he in- 
sists too much upon the gluttonous side of Athelstane's 
nature for even the best comic effect ? 

XLIII. For a parallel to the by-play among the 
minor characters, at the outset of the chapter, recall 
the scene between Isaac and Wamba at the beginning 
of the tournament (chapter vii.). The Templar's last 
proposition to Rebecca provides the "moment of final 
suspense " which often occurs in fiction and the drama. 
In the Templar's death, notice how Scott gives a natu- 
ral cause for an event which is designed to impress us, 
and does impress us, as an act of divine justice. Observe 
how simply, and yet how seriously and adequately, 
Scott deals with this great theme of the judgment of 
God. 

XLIV. The withdrawal of the Templars furnishes 
one of the most purely picturesque incidents in the 
book. Do you think the final disposition of the char- 
acters exhibits poetic justice ? Reflect carefully upon 
the last paragraph of Scott's Introduction, which bears 
upon this question. It is one of the noblest passages in 
all of Scott's works, and it was written at a time when 
he had had full experience of both good and evil fortune. 

b. Hawthorne. 

[Review questions based upon the eight tales reprinted in the 
Little Masterpieces Series, Doubleday & Page, N. Y.] 

Dr. Heidegger's Experiment. How would you char- 
acterize Hawthorne's humor, as here exhibited ? 



390 APPENDIX 

Compare this tale with any other writings of Haw- 
thorne in which the same theme appears. 

Do Dr. Heidegger's friends impress you as individ- 
uals or as types ? Is the final paragraph effective ? 

The Birthmark. Explain how the opening para- 
graph establishes the theme of the story. 

Do you find evidence here of a morbid imagination ? 
Is there anything fantastic or exaggerated in the devel- 
opment of the plot or the characters ? 

What do you think of Aylmer as a representative of 
the scientific spirit ? 

What do you conceive to be the " moral " of the 
story ? 

Ethan Brand. This should be compared carefully 
with those portions of the American Note-Books that 
describe Hawthorne's sojourn in the Berkshire Hills in 
1838. 

Can you name any modern stories or poems in which 
the same conception of the Unpardonable Sin is found ? 

What are the most effective details in the setting of 
the story? 

What are the most effective contrasts either in char- 
acter or between scenery and character ? 

In what sense is Ethan Brand a fragment ? Sug- 
gest a plan for expanding it into a more complete whole. 

Wakefield. What are the most skillful touches in the 
delineation of Mr. Wakefield's character ? 

Comment upon the union of fancy and imagination 
in this tale. 

Do you detect any irony in it ? What are its chief 
points of suggestion to you ? 

Drowne's Wooden Image. Comment upon the purely 
poetical elements of the theme. 



APPENDIX 391 

Can you describe in detail the carven figure-head? 

Is the clearing up of the mystery at the close alto- 
gether satisfactory to the reader ? 

What part of the tale would give a story-teller the 
greatest difficulty in your opinion ? 

The Ambitious Guest. Point out the sentences, here 
and there in the story, that most plainly foreshadow the 
catastrophe. 

By what means has the author secured unity of effect ? 

Comment upon this tale as an example of " local 
color " in fiction. 

"What seems to you its most admirable feature either 
in idea or workmanship ? 

The Great Stone Face. Does Hawthorne ever seem 
to you to err on the side of too great simplicity, as when 
we say that an idea is " childish" rather than "child- 
like " ? 

What do you consider the most memorable sentence 
in the story ? 

Is its ethical teaching too sharply forced upon the 
reader ? 

The Gray Champion. What points of excellence 
in narrative does this tale exhibit ? 

How can the writer of such a sketch show imagina- 
tive power while keeping close to historical fact ? 

Is anything gained by hinting, rather than actually 
declaring, that the Gray Champion was one of the 
Regicides ? 

General Questions. 

Which of these stories do you like or admire most, and 
why? 

What are the most obvious characteristics of Haw- 
thorne's style, as here exemplified ? 



392 APPENDIX 

Taking these tales as fairly representative, do you 
find Hawthorne's imagination too sombre ? 

Do you notice anything " bloodless " or " unsympa- 
thetic " or " dilettanteish " in his personality as a writer ? 

If you find these stories excelling most contemporary 
work in the same field, where does Hawthorne's superi- 
ority seem to lie ? 

c Poe. 

[Review questions based upon the seven tales reprinted in 
the Little Masterpieces Series. Doubleday & Page, N. Y.] 

Fall of the House of Usher. How does the open- 
ing sentence strike the key of the story ? 

As the story advances, what details are most success- 
ful in securing a cumulative effect ? 

In what passages are the moods and forms of nature 
used to harmonize with human emotions ? 

Do you detect any intrusion of purely rhetorical de- 
vices ? 

Ligeia. Trace the correspondence in physical fea- 
tures between the Lady Ligeia and Robert Usher and 
the portraits of Poe himself. 

Find instances of description by suggestion merely. 

Do the mythological allusions add anything to the 
effect ? 

Distinguish between the sensational and the emo- 
tional impressions produced by the closing paragraphs 
of the story. 

Do you find ground for Poe's opinion that this was 
the finest of all his tales ? 

The Cask of Amontillado. Point out the rhetorical 
means by which brevity and rapidity of movement are 
here secured. What is gained by the apparent reti- 
cence of the narrator ? 



APPENDIX 393 

How do you think his tone of cold hatred for Mon- 
tresor is best exhibited ? 

The Assignation. Do you find any trace here of 
the Byronic hero ? 

How would you characterize Poe's taste as shown by 
the interior decoration of his houses ? Point out in- 
stances of Poe's fondness for allusions to far-away and 
mysterious places and objects. 

Do you find any use of symbolism as distinguished 
from sensuous imagery ? 

What is gained by keeping the secret of the plot 
until the final sentence ? 

MS. found in a Bottle. Why is the opening page 
characteristic of Poe ? 

What are the most effective details in the portrayal 
of the storm ? 

Study the sequence of the details that are designed 
to indicate the antiquity of the doomed ship. 

What elements of the story seem to you most genu- 
inely romantic ? 

The Black Cat. What are the dangers of an open- 
ing paragraph like the one here ? 

What faults of taste do you discover ? Is too much 
stress laid upon physical rather than spiritual horrors ? 

In what respects, if any, do you find this tale supe- 
rior to the ordinary " penny dreadful " upon a similar 
theme ? 

The Gold-Bug. What traces of Defoe's influence 
are manifest here ? 

What are the elements that make this story more 
cheerful than the others in the volume ? 

In the main plan of the story, what do you think 
is gained by first showing the success of Legrand"s 



394 APPENDIX 

scheme, and then analyzing and explaining the method 
he followed ? 

General Questions. 

Which of these tales do you admire most, and why ? 

Do you see evidence of Poe's lack of power to por- 
tray objectively a variety of types and situations ? 

Do you think there is justification for the remark 
that " Poe has a manner rather than a style " ? 

Do you find Poe deficient in humor, judging from 
these tales alone ? 

What do you think of his skill in fixing the tone or 
atmosphere of each tale ? 

How is Poe's gift of imagination most clearly 
shown ? 

Summarize briefly your own personal opinion of 
Poe's artistic weakness and strength. 

d. Review questions upon George Eliot's Mid- 
dlemarch. 

How does the preface indicate the keynote of the 
book ? Determine to what extent the words first spoken 
by each character are intended to be typical of the 
speaker. In what ways are the characters of Dorothea 
and Celia most effectively contrasted ? How do Do- 
rothea's strongest and weakest traits unite with each 
other to help forward the action of the story ? Indi- 
cate the successive steps by which Dorothea's disillusion 
with regard to her husband was completed. Why do 
most of the attractive descriptions of Dorothea's per- 
sonal appearance come after her marriage rather than 
before it ? What are the commonplace traits in Lyd- 
gate? How far did he deserve his unpopularity in 



APPENDIX 395 

Middlemarch ? In the delineation of his professional 
ambitions and struggles, how much is due to the time 
in which the book is laid, and how much would always 
be true of a young doctor with similar aspirations ? 
What are the forces that made him slacken his resolu- 
tion ? Why was his casting a ballot for Tike a crisis 
in his career ? At what point after their marriage did 
Lydgate definitely surrender to the superior will power 
of Rosamond ? Do you remember any other instances, 
in George Eliot's novels, of people crippling the lives 
of others by their egoism ? Was Lydgate justified in 
taking money from Bulstrode ? What'were the causes 
of Mr. Casaubon's failure as a scholar ? Does your 
discovery of the serious nature of his illness alter es- 
sentially your attitude toward him? What are the 
characteristic qualities of Mr. Brooke's conversation ? 
Describe Will Ladislaw's personal appearance. Ex- 
plain his liking for Rosamond's society. Describe Mr. 
Bulstrode's voice. What hints are given of his hypo- 
crisy before we are actually told of it ? Compare him 
with any other hypocrites in George Eliot's books. 
Was Mary Garth right in refusing old Featherstone's 
last request ? Is the character of Featherstone over- 
done ? Does Rosamond's alleged cleverness appear in 
her conversation ? What trait in Rosamond is most 
irritating to the reader ? What are the attractive fea- 
tures of Farebrother's love for Mary Garth ? What 
are Farebrother's limitations, as George Eliot seems 
to have conceived them ? What is the process by 
which Fred Vincy attains to strength of character? 
Are there any characters in the book whose talk re- 
minds you of people in Dickens ? Instance the sta- 
tionary, as compared with the developing characters. 



396 APPENDIX 

What group of characters do you consider most suc- 
cessful ? 

Determine to what extent the first action of each 
character is intended to be typical of the person. Give 
examples of very slight incidents which are nevertheless 
significant " moments " in the story. "What situations 
do you think the strongest ? Why ? Can you recall 
any situations that are artistically ineffective? Do 
you think that the Dorothea-Casaubon plot is on the 
whole skillfully linked with the Lydgate-Rosamond 
plot ? In what ways do any of the sub-plots affect the 
main plot ? Is there justification for the author's own 
fear that in Middlemarch she had too much matter — 
too many " momenti " ? Do the plot-requirements of the 
story force any of the personages into actions that seem 
out of character ? Do you think George Eliot success- 
ful in handling the Raffles episode? In general, do 
you think her gifts and training were such as to fit her 
for managing mystery as an element in plot ? Is she 
apparently interested in action for its own sake ? Does 
the plot of Middlemarch, in any of its details or as a 
whole, seem to you to fail either in intrinsic power or 
in its ability to hold the reader's attention ? 

In the setting of Middlemarch, what are the traces 
of the impressions made by the author's own early 
life ? Why is there so little landscape depiction, when 
compared with some of her other books? Give in- 
stances, however, of landscape in harmony with the 
mood of a character ; in contrast with the mood. What 
impression do you receive of George Eliot's ideas about 
the influence of village life upon character ? Of pro- 
vincial life in general? Of the power of environment 
in determining character ? What pictures of Middle- 



APPENDIX 397 

march life do you most definitely recall, as you look 
backward to the book ? Can you think of anything in 
this novel which is out of keeping with its general 
atmosphere ? 

How far are you reminded of George Eliot's own 
personality in the account of Dorothea's girlhood ? 
Does Dorothea's theory of life, as she gives expression 
to it in the latter part of the story, correspond with 
what we know of George Eliot herself? How far 
does she sympathize with Mr. Casaubon's scholarly 
labors ? Does she betray sympathy or antipathy for 
any particular character or groups of characters, or 
would you say that her delineation was perfectly im- 
partial ? What evidence is there in this book of her 
own revolt against evangelicalism ? Comparing Mid- 
dlemarch with her earlier novels, are you conscious of 
any change in her philosophical attitude ? Does the 
book show any evidence of the author's artistic instinct 
and purely scientific interest working at cross purposes ? 
In what features of the book is George Eliot's power 
of imagination most clearly manifested? Comparing 
it with her earlier novels, do you discover any evidence 
of flagging energy ? 

Considering the book from the standpoint of style, 
do you find anything awkward or cumbersome in it? 
"Why does the theme need, for its adequate treatment, 
a large canvas? Are any of the minor characters 
drawn with too much detail ? Is there any violation 
of the principles of good narrative style ? What char- 
acteristics of the author's writing do you think most 
admirable ? Indicate passages that betray through 
their vocabulary George Eliot's scientific knowledge. 
What do you think of her fondness for moral reflec- 



398 APPENDIX 

tions ? What aphorisms in the book seem to you most 
striking ? Does the style impress you as being self- 
conscious ? Point out passages where the author, not 
satisfied with direct delineation of action, tries to make 
the action doubly plain by the addition of analysis and 
comment. To what extent does irony appear as an 
element of style ? Do you think the style is always in 
harmony with the subject-matter ? 

Summing up the book, does it on the whole give 
weight to the belief, inculcated elsewhere by George 
Eliot, that " character is fate " ? That ordinary causes 
are more significant, in the conduct of life, than extra- 
ordinary causes ? How would you express, in the few- 
est possible words, what you conceive to be the "moral " 
of the story ? 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Accident, 145. 

Action, 49, 50. 

Advantages of the novel, 66-68. 

Advantages of the stage, 68-70. 

JEsthetic criticism, 25, 26. 

Aldrich, T. B., 315, 339. 

Alexander, 31. 

Allen, James Lane, 347; Choir 
Invisible, 166-170, 175. 

American fiction, present ten- 
dencies, 335-360 ; chief figures, 
338, 339 ; marked characteris- 
tics, 341-345 ; representative 
novel, the, 345-348; interna- 
tional influences in, 348-350 ; 
provincialism in, 350 ; demo- 
cracy in, 351-355 ; future types 
of, 355-360. 

Analysis of style, 290-293. 

Andersen, Hans Christian, 215. 

Animalism, 251-253. 

Apollo Belvedere, 261. 

Appetite for fiction, the, 2-4. 

Aristotle, 16, 19. 

Arnold, Matthew, 46. 

Art and morals, 192-213. 

Arthurian romances, 31. 

Artist, the, 74, 75. 

" Artistic " language, 36. 

" Artistic temperament," the, 
201. 

" Atmosphere," 155. 

Austen, Jane, 191, 216 ; Pride and 
Prejudice, 210. 

Baldassare, 36. 

Balfour, Graham, 154. 

Balzac, 5, 39, 82, 91, 160, 179, 182, 
237, 265, 346. 

Barrie, J. W., Sentimental Tom- 
my, 297. 

Beers, H. A., 262. 

Beethoven, 261. 

Berlioz, 265. 

Besant, Sir Walter, 296-298. 

Bjornson, 349. 

Black, William, 166. 

Blackmore, E. D., Lorna Boone, 
39, 156. 



Bolinghroke, 192. 

Bonheur, Kosa, 219. 

Bosanquet, Bernard, 90, 91, 208. 

Bourget, Paul, 257, 294. 

Bronte, Charlotte, 29, 64, 97. 

Brown, Brockden, 342. 

Brownell, W. C, 217. 

Browning, Kobert, 86, 188; An- 
drea del Sarto, 199 ; Fra Lippo 
Lippi, 222. 

Brunetiere, F„ 78, 90, 100, 103, 170, 
177, 331. 

Bunyan, John, 119. 

Burns, Bobert, 202, 350. 

Burroughs, John, 353. 

Byron, Lord, 45, 262, 265, 352; 
Childe Harold, 222 ; Don Juan, 
222. 

Cable, G. W„ 315, 339, 347. 
Calderon, 264. 

Canterbury Tales, The, 112. 
Caricatures, 119, 120. 
Carlyle, 33, 152, 350. 
Catastrophe, 56, 59, 140, 141. 
Cellini, Benvenuto, 199, 200. 
Century Dictionary, The, 268. 
Cervantes, 189, 237. 
Character, 17, 18, 94-128, 307. 
Character-contrast, 124. 
Character-grouping, 125. 
Characteristic traits, 111-124. 
Character-novel, the, 141. 
Charlemagne, 31. 
Chateaubriand, 160. 
Chaucer, 303; The Canterbury 

Tales, 112 ; The Knight's Tale, 

135. 
Chopin, 261, 265. 
Christian, The, 71. 
Christianity, 243-246. 
Cid, the, 31. 

Clark, J. Scott, 290-292. 
Classic qualities, 23, 24, 260, 261. 
Class traits, 112, 113. 
" Climax," the, 55-59, 139, 140. 
Coleridge, 262, 274. 
Collins, Wilkie, 333. 
Cologne Cathedral, 261. 



402 



INDEX 



Comment, the author's, 103. 

Commonplace, the, 223. 

Complex characters, 106. 

Complexity of plot, 137. 

" Complication," the, 59. 

Contemporary fiction, 14, 15. 

Content in fiction, 19-21. 

Conventionalism, 218. 

Cooper, James Fenimore, 64, 
158, 169, 338, 339, 342, 351. 

Crabbe, George, Tales of the 
Hall, 222. 

Crane, Stephen, 315. 

Crawford, F. Marion, 339 ; Zo- 
roaster, 273 ; Mr. Isaacs, 274 ; 
Casa Braccio, 275. 

Criticism of fiction, the, 7, 14, 15, 
25-27. 

" Criticism of life, a," 46, 81. 

Cross, J. W., 41, 154. 

Cross, Wilbur L., 13. 

D'Annunzio, 349. 

Dante, 46, 346. 

" Dares the Phrygian," 31. 

Darwin, 33, 238. 

Dauclet, 43, 211, 238, 297, 303, 349. 

Davis, K. H., 122, 159. 

Decay of Art, The. 87. 

Defoe, Daniel, 184, 189, 212; 

Captain Singleton, 161, 162 ; 

Robinson Crusoe, 232 ; Rox- 

ana, 232. 
Delacroix, 265. 
Delaroche, 265. 
Deming, P., 314. 
Democracy, 243, 351-355. 
Denoument, the, 59, 61-64. 
" Detachment," 249. 
Deterioration of character, 109, 

110. 
Developing characters, 106-108. 
De Vigny, Alfred, 238, 265. 
Dickens, Charles, 42, 52, 108, 120, 

130, 137, 166, 182, 183, 186, 192, 

211, 236, 291, 318, 321, 340, 354 ; 

David Copper-field, 37, 112, 201 ; 

Tale of Two Cities, 55, 151 ; Our 

Mutual Friend, 138; Oliver 

Twist, 145 ; Nicholas Nickleby, 

207. 
" Dictys the Cretan," 31. 
Didacticism, 208, 209. 
Disraeli, B., Lothair, 277. 
" Divine average, the," 354. 
Dowden, Edward, 73. 
Doyle, Conan, 15, 98. 
Drama, the, 16; as compared 

with the novel, 48-72. 
Dramatization of novels, 70-72. 



Dumas (the elder), 131, 182, 340 ; 

Three Musketeers, 63. 
Dumas (the younger), 318. 

Ebers, George, 157. 

" Effectivism," 216. 

Eliot, George, 25, 41, 44, 45, 67, 76, 
86, 103, 154, 166, 181, 182, 192, 
198, 243, 293, 308, 327, 330, 354 ; 
Adam Bede, 11, 55, 106, 109, 
110, 181, 209, 236, 257, 329 ; Ro- 
mola, 36, 62, 98, 110, 112, 151; 
Middlemarch, 55, 58, 109, 112, 
138, 281, 324, 326, 356; Daniel 
Deronda, 98, 106, 109, 140,328; 
Silas Marner, 133, 150; The 
Mill on the Floss, 140. 236; 
Scenes from Clerical Life, 
295. 

Elizabethan theatre, 68. 

Emotion, the novelist's, 182-184. 

Enjoyment of fiction, the, 9-11. 

Environment, 155. 

Evening Post, The New York, 
252. 

" Every-day life," the, 225. 

" Exciting moment," the, 53. 

Experience, the novelist's, 180, 
181. 

Experimental Novel, The, 76-80. 

Exposition, the, 51, 52. 

Fact, 21. 

" Falling " action, the, 56-64, 140. 

Fashionable types, 121, 122. 

Fate, 147-149. 

Fiction-writer, the (general dis- 
cussion), 177-216 

Fielding, 41, 83, 96, 97, 162, 203, 
211, 233-235, 327, 351; Amelia, 
106, 235, 257 ; Tom Jones, 212. 

" Final suspense," the, 60. 

Fine art, 208. 

FitzGerald, Edward, 258, 277. 

Flaubert, Gustave, 39, 99, 192, 
250, 284, 349 ; Madame Bovary, 
183, 228, 237, 238, 245. 

Form in fiction, 20, 21, 23-25 ; gen- 
eral discussion, 284-299. 

Forms of fiction, 19. 

Era Angelico, 197. 

Fragonard, 221. 

Francke, Kuno, 264. 

Freytag, G., 54, 59, 60. 

" Gag," the, 111, 120. 
Garland, Hamlin, 159, 348. 
Gaskell, Mrs., Cranford, 6. 
Genius, 202. 
" Gibson girl," the, 121. 



INDEX 



Goethe, 46, 105, 126, 197, 213, 264 ; 

Wilhelm Meisier, 203. 
Gogol, 245. 
Goldsmith, Oliver, 191 ; Vicar of 

Wakefield, 265, 266. 
Goncourt brothers, 250. 
Gosse, Edmund, 353. 
Gray, Thomas, 188. 

Hale, Edward Everett, 315. 

Hardy, Thomas, 19, 83, 150, 166, 
173,241, 248 ; Tess of the D'Ur- 
bervilles, 55, 71, 109, 148, 149, 
174, 242; Wessex Tales, 131, 
289 ; Return of the Native, 168. 

Harris, Joel Chandler, 347. 

Harte, Bret, 5, 315, 320, 321, 339, 
348. 

Hawthorne, 23, 25, 40, 64, "91, 
97, 130, 179, 185. 187, 216, 231, 
270, 295, 303-306, 322, 338, 340, 
342, 351 ; Scarlet Letter, 7, 62, 
71, 137, 209, 211, 238, 272, 326 ; 
House of the Seven Gables, 
• 54, 104, 105, 137-139, 146, 270, 
272 ; Marble Faun, 62, 106, 141, 
143, 231, 272; Wakefield, 132 ; 
Ethan Brand, 249. 

Hearn, Lafcadio, 166. 

Hegel, 259, 260. 

" Heightening," the, 54, 55. 

Hertford, Lord, 33, 34. 

Hewlett, Maurice, 157. 

Higginson, T. W., 300. 

Historical setting, 157, 158. 

History of the English Novel, 
12-14. 

Hoffmann, 327. 

Homer, 346. 

Howells, W. D., 40, 46, 159, 225, 
272, 332, 339; Modern In- 
stance, 110 ; Silas Lapham, 110, 
332. 

Hugo, Victor, 47, 154, 163, 186, 
238, 265, 351, 356; Les Misera- 
bles, 266. 

" Human documents, the," 89. 

Hutton, Eichard H, 245. 

Huxley, 33. 

Ibsen, 75, 318. 

Idealism, 218, 219, 280-283. 

Iliad, 30, 31. 

Imagination, 98, 99, 155, 184-187, 

205, 220, 359, 360. 
Immorality, the artist's, 198-202. 
" Impressionism," 249. 
Incident, 138, 139. 
" Inciting moment," the, 53. 
Individual in fiction, the, 115-124. 



Instinct for beauty, 215. 
" Invention," 98. 

James, Henry, 10, 86, 89, 92, 94, 
177, 193, 223, 231, 284, 294, 316, 
326, 339. 

James, William, 86. 

Jewett, Sarah Orne, 166, 303, 315, 
348. 

John Halifax, Gentleman, 110. 

Johnson, C. F., 138. 

Johnson, Samuel, 115. 

Johnston, Mary, 281, 347. 

Jowett, Benjamin, 1. 

Kean, Edmund, 70. 

Keats, John, 262; Fndymion, 
222. 

King, Captain Charles, 159. 

King, Grace, 347. 

Kingsley, Charles, 85, 157 ; Here- 
ward, 62. 

Kipling, Rudyard, 5, 19, 97, 130, 
166, 289, 303, 315, 317, 329, 354; 
His Private Honour, 133-135. 

Labor, the artist's, 195-198. 
Lamb, Charles, 189. 
Landscape, 160-174. 
Lanier, Sidney, 28, 181, 235. 
Leibnitz, 192. 
Lessing, 17, 19, 264. 
Limitations, an author's, 188, 189. 
Limitations of realism, 247, 248. 
Lincoln, Abraham, 115, 117, 118, 

350. 
Liszt, 131, 224. 

Literature of evasion, the, 277. 
Little Minister, The, 71. 
Local color, 158, 159. 
London, Jack, 348. 
Longfellow, 40. 
" Loosened speech," 43. 
Loti, Pierre, 154, 160, 257. 
Lowell, James Russell, 335. 
Lytton, Bulwer, 157, 325. 

Mabie, Hamilton W., 349. 

Marlowe, Christopher, 220 ; His- 
tory of Br. Faustus, 220. 

Masson, David, 177, 181, 192, 328. 

Materialistic tendencies, 90. 

Materials, the novelist's, 94, 95. 

Materials of fiction and poetry, 
31, 37-40. 

Matthews, Brander, 187, 301-303. 

Maupassant, Guy de, 99, 101, 160, 
239, 256, 319, 327; Pierre et 
Jean, 6. 

Mediaeval romancer, 82. 



404 



INDEX 



Melema, Tito, 36. 

Meredith, George, 93, 108; Or- 
deal of Richard Feverel, 37, 
110, 173 ; Beauchamp's Career, 
37. 

Methods of fiction study, 12-21. 

Michelangelo, 220. 

Milieu, 155. 

Millet, J. F., 168. 

Milton, 101. 

Minto, William, 290, 291. 

Moliere, 43, 346. 

Moral abstractions, 119. 

Moral purpose in fiction, 207- 
213. 

Morals and art, 193-213. 

Moral sympathy, 101. 

Moral unity of character, 127. 

Motives for reading fiction, 4-7. 

Murfree, Mary N., 347. 

" Muscular Christianity," 85. 

Music, 22, 38. 

Musketeers, The Three, 63. 

Musset, Alfred de, 265. 

Mystery in plot, 143. 

National traits, 114. 
Naturalistic spirit, the, 88. 
Nature, 213. 
" Neo-romantic movement," the, 

278. 
Nettleship, Henry, 24. 
Norris, Frank, 155. 
Novalis, 264. 

Observation of character, 96, 97. 
Ouida, 6, 166. 

Paderewski, 198. 

Page, Thomas Nelson, 347, 348. 

Paradise Lost, 101. 

Parthenon, 261. 

Pasteur, 243. 

Pater, Walter, 267, 268 ; Imagi- 
nary Portraits, 50, 110. 

Penelope, 34. 

Personal tastes in fiction, 7, 27. 

Personality, 18, 20, 34. 

Phelps, W. L., 262. 

Philosophy, the novelist's, 191- 
193. 

Photography, 83, 84, 88, 223, 227, 
251. 

Physiology, 85. 

Picaresque romance, the, 57, 107. 

Pilgrim's Progress, The, 91. 

Play writing, 64-66. 

Plot, in drama, 17, 18 ; in fiction, 
129-153, 307. 

Plot-novel, the, 142. 



Plot-ridden characters, 126, 151. 
Poe, 37, 182, 270, 303-306, 310, 312, 

313, 321, 322, 327, 332, 338, 339. 
Poetic justice, 149. 
Poetry, 16, 22, 28-47; lyric, 28- 

30 ; narrative, 30, 31. 
Pope, 192. 

Portrayal of character, 102-105. 
Prime, W. C, 258. 
Prisoner of Zenda, The, 71. 
Problems involved in studying 

fiction, 1, 2. 
Professional traits, 112. 
" Prose poetry," 36, 37, 42-44. 
Psychology, 86, 87, 91, 92. 
Public, the novelist's, 189-191. 

Quiller Couch, A. T., 315. 

Racine, 44. 

Radcliffe, Mrs. Anne, Mysteries 
of Udolpho, 144, 163-165. 

Raleigh, Professor Walter, 13, 
81, 204. 

Raphael, 219. 

Reade, Charles, 297, 327. 

Realism, 217-257; denned, 229; 
English, 231-236; French, 237- 
239, 254; American, 239, 240, 
255 ; future of, 255 ; dangers of, 
248-254. 

Realities, 184. 

Regnault, Henri, 219. 

Remington, Frederic, 84. 

" Resolution," the, 59, 61-64. 

Retribution, 145, 146. 

Revival of Art, The, 87. 

Rhetoric, 286. 

Richard the Lion-Heart, 145. 

Richardson, Charles F., 341, 342. 

Richardson, Samuel, 97 ; Clarissa 
Harlowe, 212; Pamela, 233, 
295. 

Richelieu, 70. 

" Rising action," the, 56, 140. 

Rodin, 261. 

Roles in fiction, 113, 114. 

Romances, 30, 31. 

Romantic art, 121. 

Romantic atmosphere, the, 270- 
276. 

Romanticism, 240 ; general dis- 
cussion, 258-283 ; English, 262, 
263 ; German, 263, 264 ; French, 
264-266 ; definitions of, 266-268. 

Romantic mood, the, 269, 270. 

Romantic revival, 255, 278. 

" Romantic " qualities, 260, 261. 

Rossetti, D. G., 86 ; Sister Helen, 
222. 



INDEX 



405 



Eousseau, J. J., 160, 235, 262. 
Eoyce, Josiah, 91. 
Buskin, John, 195, 196. 
Russell, Clark, 297. 

Sainte-Beuve, 46. 

Sand, George, 29, 160, 211, 265, 
318. 

Schiller, 264. 

Schlegel brothers, the, 264. 

" School of Terror," the, 186. 

Science and fiction, 17, 73-93, 243, 
251. 

Scientist, the, 73, 74. 

Scott, Sir Walter, 4, 13, 23, 25, 45, 
52, 93, 97, 99, 108, 111, 121, 131, 
156, 157, 159, 192, 211, 216, 231, 
235, 236, 262, 327, 340, 350; 
Ivanhoe, 11, 34, 147, 158; 
Antiquary, 201, 308 ; Bride of 
Ldmmermoor, 211 ; Quentin 
Durward, 274 ; Talisman, 274 ; 
Waverley, 295; Old Mortal- 
ity, 328. 

Sectional traits, 114, 115. 

Sentimentalism, 221. 

Seton- Thompson, Ernest, 42, 
117. 

Setting, the, 17, 18, 66, 152-176, 
307. 

Sewell, Miss Anna, 207. 

Sexual morality, 206. 

Shakespeare, 203, 214, 265, 346; 
Hamlet, 34, 36, 49, 53, 56, 57, 61, 
7,2, 100; Macbeth, 53, 55-57, 
59, 60, 70 ; Julius Ccesar, 53, 56, 
57; Lear, 56; Borneo and Ju- 
liet, 59, 70 ; Biehard TIL, 60 ; 
Othello, 61; Falstaff, 100; 
Horatio, 107, 108 ; Merchant 
of Venice, 149; Midsummer 
Night's Dream, 261. 

Shelley, 245, 262. 

Shorthouse, James ; Blanche, 
Lady Falaise, 170-173. 

Short story, the (general discus- 
sion), 300-334 , character-draw- 
ing in, 308-310, 324 ; plot in, 310- 
313; background in, 313-316; 
advantages of, 316-323; de- 
mands of, 323-325 ; what it fails 
to demand, 325-329. 

Sienkiewicz, Fan Michael, 55 ; 
Fire and Sword, 281. 

Simple characters, 105. 

Situation, 138, 139. 

Sophocles, 261. 

Southey, 274. 

Stael, Mme. de, 148. 

Stationary characters, 106-108. 



Stephen, Leslie, 28. 

Stevenson, Bobert Louis, 10,15, 
129, 131, 154, 168, 214, 226, 278, 
294, 295, 303, 324, 325 ; Treasure 
Island, 39, 332, 356; Kid- 
napped, 54 ; Dr. Jekyll and Mr. 
Hyde, 71, 356 ; St. Ives, 142. 

Steyne, the Marquis of, 33, 34. 

Stillman, W. J., 87, 88. 

Stockton, Frank, 189, 215, 311, 
312, 339; Budder Grange, 5, 
333. 

Stoddard, F. H., 80. 

Story of an African Farm, The, 
180. 

Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 339, 348 ; 
Uncle Tom's Cabin, 83, 207. 

Struggling characters, 108, 109. 

" Stuff " of a novel, the, 287. 

Style in fiction, 290-293. 

Sub-plots, 149-151. 

Symonds, J. A., 352,-353. 

Sympathetic personage, the, 100, 
103. 

Technique, the artist's, 198-201. 

Technique in fiction, 359. 

Tennyson, 32, 33, 75, 226, 296; 
Palace of Art, 211 ; Gardener's 
Daughter, 222 ; Bizpah, 222. 

Tennyson, Charles, 296. 

Thackeray, 2, 23, 25, 32-34, 52, 
67, 103, 130, 137,166, 211, 277, 295, 
300, 327 ; Henry Esmond, 11, 
35,109, 110, 139, 212, 257, 288; 
Pendennis, 53, 54, 209, 328; 
Vanity Fair, 55, 58, 71, 72, 104, 
106, 138, 329; The Newcomes, 
109, 110, 115, 201, 308 ; Becky 
Sharp, 115, 120, 311 ; Bitt 
Crawley, 120. 

Thought, the novelist's, 181, 182. 

" Three-leaved clover," the, 136. 

Tieck, 264. 

Tolstoi, 82, 101, 241, 349; Anna 
Karenina, 109, 175, 210, 228; 
War and Peace, 154, 156; Be- 
surrection, 210, 281. 

Topography, 39. 

" Tragic moment," the, 56, 57. 

Training of the novelist, the, 294- 
299. 

" Transcript of life," 223, 227. 

Trollope Anthony, 159, 182, 183, 
325; Framley Parsonage, 7; 
Barchester Towers, 289. 

Truth, 21. 

Turgenieff, 166, 192, 211, 248, 289, 
349, 351 ; Nest of Nobles, 175. 

Tyndall, 33. 



406 



INDEX 



Twain, Mark, 339. 

Type in fiction, the, 115-124. 

Ulysses, 34. 

" Unpleasant," the, 225, 226, 228. 

Unrealities, 185. 

Valdes, Sister St. Sulpice, 253, 

279, 280. . 
Van Loo, Carlo, 221. 
Venus of Melos, 204. 
Verne, Jules, 4, 76. 
Voltaire, Candide, 110, 191. 

Wagner, 24 ; Tannhauser, 205. 

Ward, Mrs. Humphry, 86, 207; 
Eleanor, 62; David Grieve, 
110 ; Robert Elsmere, 150. 

Warner, Charles Dudley, 159. 



Watteau, 221. 

Webster, Daniel, 350. 

Wells, H. G., 76. 

Weyrnan, Stanley, 157; Gentle- 
man of France, 174. 

Wharton, Edith, 86. 

Whitman, Walt, 85, 342, 347, 353, 
354. 

Whittier, J. G., 350. 

Wilkins, Mary, E., 248, 314, 348 j 
New England Nun, 135, 136, 
315. 

Winckelmann, 264. 

Wordsworth, 38, 46, 169, 262, 350. 

Zangwill, Israel, 159. 

Zola, 170,175, 176,197, 238; The 

Experimental Novel, 76-80, 90 ; 

Lourdes, 89. 



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